


Zero Hour

by RevenantAvenger90



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: 9/11, Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, Family Issues, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Terrorism, Kosovo Campaign, North Tower, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, September 11 Attacks, everyone knows everyone who's Greek, some sexual content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2020-10-14 22:21:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 46,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20608271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RevenantAvenger90/pseuds/RevenantAvenger90
Summary: He can’t breathe. It feels like there’s a weight on his chest. Alexios grimaces and shifts--and his world explodes into a blaze of agony.*****Alexios Agiadis is trapped in the North Tower when it comes down. Severely injured and with the clock ticking, he must do everything he can to survive the disaster that is 9/11.Modern AU, ensemble cast, trying to be authentic but might need some help. Title from the National Geographic "9/11 Commemorative Collection" documentary series episode two, "9/11: Zero Hour". Rated for violence, gore, imagery, and sexual situations. I appreciate any feedback!Note: Adult situations in Chapter 3 and 5. Graphic descriptions of gore and imagery in Chapter 5.





	1. Ground Zero: Alexios, 11 Sep. 2001

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alexios wakes in darkness.

* * *

"Take courage, my heart: you have been through worse than this. Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this."  
-Homer, _The Odyssey_

* * *

He can’t breathe.

That’s the first thing that comes into Alexios’s mind when the haze clears from his thoughts, but when he coughs and cracks open his eyes, he finds that seeing is irrelevant, because it’s so dark- wherever he is- that he can’t see a damn thing right in front of his nose. He blinks sluggishly. Perhaps he hit his head harder than he thought, or maybe the power went out when he walked into the bathroom for a piss, but if that were the case, surely the emergency lighting should have kicked on by now, right? His head is throbbing, and he still can’t breathe. It feels like there’s a weight on his chest. Alexios grimaces and shifts-

-and his world explodes into a blaze of agony.

He falls back with a gasp. Sweat beads upon his brow. _Mother of God, that hurts!_ Stars burst across his vision in sheer cussed defiance of the all-encompassing blackness, and bile rushes up his throat. Alexios turns his head before he can choke, and heaves out everything in his stomach. His left leg is a burning mass of agony like nothing he has felt since Kosovo. It’s sharp and hot and every little motion sends flames licking up his thigh to his hip and further up. When his stomach stops clenching, Alexios is left panting. He grimaces and spits. Then he takes stock of himself with new awareness.

Alexios prods gingerly at himself- as best he can, at least, since there seems to be a beam of some kind that has fallen across his chest. It is solid and hot, and judging by the shape of it- three flat panels welded together- it is probably an I-beam, the heavy kind that they use in the infrastructure of skyscrapers, the kind you see in old photographs where workers sit on the beams and chat and eat lunch hundreds of feet above the ground. He groans and tries to shift the beam, but it is no use. He’s a strong guy, but he has only one arm to use and no leverage, and at any rate, the beam is too heavy for him to move without a crane or forklift or at least ten other strong men. It’s equally possible that it’s pinned at one or both ends. He is lying on a pile of debris. Something is digging into his left shoulder, though he cannot tell how deep it goes, or if it has penetrated his skin.

He reaches down with his right hand- his right arm is pinned under the beam, but his left arm is arched up over it where the beam is digging into his ribs- and feels for his legs. His hand is shaking so much that he can’t find anything right away, and panic shoots through him for an instant. Did the beam cut him in half? Is that why he’s in so much pain? Does he even have any legs left?

His fingers find his right thigh, and the breath leaves his lungs in a wheezing rush. Right. Okay. Right leg is still there, at least down to his knee. He can work with that. Everything’s tingling so bad he can’t tell if the rest of his leg is still there. He fumbles in the dark, stretches his fingers across his torso, and-

“_Fuck!”_ he yelps, because _Goddamn, that hurts_ and he turns his head and retches again as agony blazes up his left thigh. He has the sudden urge to piss; Alexios groans and grabs himself through the rough fabric of his dungarees, holds it in- and thank God, the family jewels are still there, though they’re tucked close to his body in reaction to the pain, and _fuck,_ he doesn’t blame them, because he’d do anything to get away from this agony himself. Alexios retches again and then coughs and spits, and when he sucks in a breath, the air is thick with a heavy dust that coats his tongue and leaves his teeth full of grit. Every breath hurts. Every_thing_ hurts.

Alexios groans long and deep and grinds his teeth until they ache. It’s been a while since he’s had to master himself like this. Slowly, his brain recalls how to compartmentalize the pain, how to shove it down into a box and push it away so that he can focus on what’s going on. His hand shakes violently as he reaches over and gently feels his way down his left hip to his thigh, braces himself for the pain, and breathes shallowly in through his nose, out through his mouth as his trembling fingertips meet the wet tackiness of blood.

The culprit is a hole in his thigh that feels like it’s as big around as two of his fingers put together. It’s a ragged mess of torn skin and mangled flesh and rough fabric and sticky blood, and sparks flash before Alexios’s eyes when he touches it. He closes his eyes- it doesn’t help at all- and feels his way down to the piece of metal that’s pierced him.

“Fuck,” he breathes. It’s a piece of rebar about two inches wide. Blood is seeping from the hole in a steady trickle. If Alexios remembers his anatomy lessons- and he thinks he does, since the Navy trained him so well for it- the hole is near the femoral artery. It might even have pierced or severed it, which means he’s in deep shit if he removes the metal. This piece of rebar is probably the only thing that’s holding the hole closed. If he removes it, he’ll bleed out and die in seconds.

Alexios groans and lets his head come to rest on the rubble beneath him, and he blinks, unseeing, into the impenetrable blackness above him. How long has he been down here? How did he even get here? The last thing he remembers is-

_Oh. Oh, fuck. Oh, shit. Kleio. Brasidas. Alkibiades and Sokrates. Kyra and Thaletas._ They were- they were all-

Alexios shifts, and clenches his teeth on a howl of pain. He stills. His head goes fuzzy. He gasps for breath, and slowly the pain settles into a dull ache that burns its way all up and down his left side. If not for that pain, he would be cold.

He steadies himself, pushes the pain down, down, into a little box in the corner of his mind, and lets training take over. Tourniquet. He needs to slow the flow of blood before he goes into shock. Further into shock. Fuck it, he’s already in hypovolemic shock- he can tell just from the sheer amount of blood saturating his pants. He can’t afford to lose any more than he already has. He scrabbles for his belt buckle, and then realizes that he’ll never be able to tie off his leg anyway, not with his left arm stuck above his head as it is. If he wants to tie off his leg, he’ll have to get out from under this beam… somehow.

Just the thought of moving makes him ache, but he has no choice. Alexios sucks in a few quick breaths through his nose and then raises his left leg just a bit- and howls, because _Holy motherfucking doglicker that HURTS!_ Blood gushes anew over his hand, scalding hot and wetter than a woman’s-

“Fuck,” he gasps, but this time it’s in relief, because the rebar comes free from the ground with one good tug, and he has to remind himself that that’s a _good thing,_ because even though it fucking _hurts,_ it means he can maybe shuffle to the side and work his way out from under the I-beam that’s pinning him to the rubble. He pulls his knee up with a groan as the rebar shifts within the muscle, and he starts shimmying over to his right- ankle, hips, shoulders, head, ankle, hips, shoulders, head- wiggling like some demented earthworm until the pressure finally eases off his chest and carefully- _carefully!_\- he wiggles himself out from under the beam entirely, praying to Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and God Almighty all the way that the whole thing won’t shift and decapitate him in the process.

“Hail Mary, full of grace,” he’s gasping as the tip of his nose brushes against rough metal once- twice- and then he’s free, and the beam is behind him. Alexios breathes a sigh of relief and pulls his left arm free. “Thank God for small mercies.”

He tugs his hair down against the back of his neck for good measure. Then he eases himself into a sitting position and works his belt off. The bleeding has intensified from his exertions, and his elevated heart rate is not helping things. Alexios takes a couple breaths and then he wraps the belt around the top of his thigh, above the gaping wound- and cinches it down as tight as his shaking arms will let him. It hurts like a groin-kick. Well, probably because it’s pretty close to his actual groin, come to think of it. Alexios is gasping by the time the pins and needles spread down his leg, signaling that his bloodflow has been cut off (or at least minimized). He just hopes it’s not too late. Exsanguination- bleeding out- is a horrible way to die.

There are a lot of horrible ways to die, though, so Alexios counts himself lucky that he wasn’t cut in half and leans himself back against the beam that was previously trapping him. His ribs are hurting like a bastard. Further probing reveals that there are at least three broken ones, and he counts himself lucky and blessed that the beam didn’t collapse far enough to crush his entire ribcage. That’s one of those horrible ways to die, he thinks, though he doesn’t say this aloud. No point in wasting air. There’s no telling whether or not there’s any access to the outside world, here, or if he’s been cut off and this is the only air he has. At any rate, the dust is beginning to settle, finally, though every shift of the rubble overhead sends another shower of dust raining down into his little cavity; he can hear it trickling and chattering as it sifts down onto concrete and glass and metal and stone.

He coughs and closes his eyes, and tries not to think of what may have happened to his friends- and what _did_ happen to the other three-thousand or so people who were in the North Tower with him not long ago.

The sound of the planes impacting the North Tower and then the South Tower of the World Trade Center rips through his memory like the crunching crash of a car accident-

Alexios grimaces and wrenches his mind away from it. He’ll deal with it later. Right now, he needs to figure out a way to get out of here, or get someone’s attention, or something- anything- else.

Now that the immediate danger of bleeding out has been stymied, he realizes that he can, in fact, see a tiny bit of his surroundings, so the darkness is not as complete as he had thought it was. The very fact that he can see even a little is a huge relief, because aside from alleviating the threat of the crushing press of the blackness around him spiking his claustrophobia, it means that there’s some gap in the walls of his tomb, some little nook through which light is entering- and air, by extension. He seeks the source of the light, and after several moments’ struggle, his hypersensitive eyes catch the barest gleam of sunlight on metal. It’s up near eye-level about three feet away, so Alexios gingerly gets his hands under him and scoots himself over to the source.

It’s a pipe. It was probably a sewage pipe or something at one point, judging by the smell coming from it, but Alexios is not complaining. The pipe is about five inches wide and hollow all the way through, hollow enough that it’s letting down not only sunlight but the faintest hint of a breeze, and that means that it leads outside, however far away “outside” is. He pushes at it, tests it, tries to make it budge, but it is stuck fast, unmoving.

His head swims. Alexios sways, suddenly woozy. He sighs and leans his temple against the pipe for a moment, fighting down the dizziness and a sudden rush of nausea. It will do him no good to pass out, not when it’s likely that nobody knows where he is or if he’s even alive. He needs to get a message out somehow, needs to catch someone’s attention, but… he’s not sure how. He can hardly think, he’s so tired, and God, but it’s hot. He lays his hand upon the ground beneath him, and it’s warm to the touch.

Just his luck. There’s probably a fire burning somewhere below…

Fuck, he’s tired.

His eyes slip closed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author's Notes:**  
This fic was spawned for one reason: to bring home the reality of what happened on September 11, 2001 in a way that people will feel down in their bones.
> 
> This year marks 18 years since the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks on the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. I look around me and it seems like only one news station is televising the memorial service; the rest of them seem like they're cutting it off early or cutting it off entirely because of who our President currently is.
> 
> That is wrong.
> 
> A memorial service for the dead should not be censored because of who is presiding over it, and it seems more and more as though people are forgetting what happened on that terrible day 18 years ago. People get absorbed in petty squabbles of inequality and race and sexuality, and they forget what's really important in this world. They forget what happened, and what came out of this tragedy, or they try to twist America into the villain of the story.
> 
> Forget who's the President. Forget your political agenda. Forget about ethnicity or religion or nationality or sexuality. People of all types were lost that day to an act of evil so vile that our country has never been the same since.
> 
> Remember the victims, the people who sacrificed their lives that others might live. Remember the 2,973 futures that were snuffed out in the space of two hours that warm September morning. Remember the husbands and wives and children who were left behind.
> 
> Remember the way America banded together in a unified front afterward to seek out and put an end to Al Qaeda so that this could never happen again.
> 
> This is a story not of despair. This is a story of grief, of love, and- above all- this is a story of hope.
> 
> I hope you'll share your stories with me, if you remember that day or lost someone at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, or in the plane crash in Pennsylvania.
> 
> God bless you all.


	2. Countdown: Alexios, 9 Sep. 2001

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> September 9, 2001 throws some challenges Alexios's way as he faces changes in his present and his past rears its ugly head in some of the worst ways.

* * *

"Come, then, put away your sword in its sheath, and let us two go up into my bed so that, lying together in the bed of love, we may then have faith and trust in each other."  
-Homer,_ The Odyssey_

* * *

_“Down!”_

Alexios yelped as Brasidas shoved him back down to the ground with a firm hand on the back of his neck. The air rattled with the _pop-pop-pop_ of automatic weapons’ fire, and Alexios swallowed and clutched his rifle with white-knuckled fingers even while his medical kit rattled on the pavement not two feet away from him. He had lost it when Brasidas had tackled him behind the humvee they were currently flattened under, and they had been pinned down ever since. Beside him, Brasidas popped back up and fired off a two-second burst, and an answering howl of pain told Alexios that a round had hit at least one hostile.

Someone was shouting in Slavic. Alexios couldn’t understand a word of it, but it sounded angry and violent, and his gaze darted around for the source. To his right, the Sphinx- Bayek Zaman- ducked behind a low wall and met Alexios’s gaze before giving the younger man a nod. Bayek turned dark eyes back out to the insurgents they were fighting, and beside him, the brothers Kadar and Malik al-Sayf were preparing a pair of grenades for use. Altaïr ibn la-Ahad was perched on a rooftop somewhere nearby; every so often, sniper fire would pepper their attackers and pin them down for a few blessed seconds, and the comm chatter from Connor and Jacob indicated that they were working on flanking the enemy.

“Give us five more minutes,” Evie murmured over the comms. “We’re almost to the barricade, and then we’ll be through. Aveline, you ready?”

“Yes,” came the soft acknowledgment, gently accented by delicate Louisiana Creole. “Bringing around the turret now.”

“Pin them down, boys!” exclaimed Ezio, and they set their plan in motion. Alexios, Brasidas, Bayek, Kadar, and Malik all darted out from behind their cover, firing freely into the windows and doorways where the muzzle-flashes had been coming from. Curses and screams of pain split the air. Malik and Kadar rushed up to one doorway, pulled the pins on their grenades, and chucked them inside.

Alexios turned away- but then someone hollered something, and a metallic _tink-tink-tink_ caught his ears. He turned.

It seemed to happen in slow motion. One of the grenades came flying back out of the doorway, probably kicked back by one of the house’s occupants. It bounced across the ground, straight toward Malik, who had turned away and was shooting at another insurgent, and Kadar’s eyes widened. His mouth opened and he screamed his older brother’s name, and dove toward him. Malik turned. Blinked. Kadar landed on top of the grenade.

_Boom._

_Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom_

Alexios shoots upright, gasping, pistol held out in front of him, and nearly unloads an entire magazine into the brick wall across from his bed before he _remembers,_ and removes his fingertip from the trigger before he can fire a single round. He gulps down air; when he finally lowers the pistol to the mattress beside him, his hand is shaking so violently that the rounds rattle in the chamber and the magazine. The Sig Sauer M-1911 thuds onto the blanket, and he lets go of it and buries his face in his hands.

_Boom-boom-boom._

“Alexios!” Kassandra’s voice reaches him through the door. “Come on, get your ass out of bed! You’re going to be late!”

Her English is unaccented, perfect American English. His own is noticeably accented by the Greek he grew up speaking. “I’m up. I’m up.” _Boom-boom. _“Damnit, Kassandra, I’m _up!”_

“Well, you’re still going to be late, asshole.” Her footsteps thump down the hall, and Alexios is left alone. The normality of the exchange has calmed his nerves a bit, though, and when he finally catches his breath he knows he’s going to be late without a doubt.

He glances at the clock on his bedside table. So much for catching Kleio before she heads off to school; Brasidas will be at work already, and Kleio will take the subway to the university, and he won’t see her again until lunchtime at the earliest, if she can spare the time to brave the crowds. Alexios curses softly to himself and rolls out of bed with a groan, the kind only a veteran soldier can make. His arm cramps when he raises it above his head, but it’s the sort of stiff cramp that only comes after a long, deep sleep, and it works itself out quickly enough. No time to shower, not this morning. Alexios throws on his uniform, gathers his long hair into a messy man-bun (for which Kassandra will no doubt tease him mercilessly) and shoves his Sig into its holster and puts it into his duffel with the rest of his stuff.

After that nightmare, his stomach is churning. He’s not entirely sure he’s up for breakfast. The look his little sister tosses him as he shuffles out into the kitchen is one of long-suffering annoyance. Alexios has no stomach for her bullshit, this morning. He sets his duffel by the door and shuffles over to the coffee pot.

“Rough night?” Kassandra asks him between crunches of cereal. A box of Cheerios is sitting on the counter, flaps flung wide and interior bag sitting wide open for the world to see its greatly-diminished contents. Alexios says nothing, but reaches into the box with one hand and rolls the bag down so that the cereal won’t get stale. With the other, he deftly pours some coffee into a travel mug and drops in a pinch of Splenda to sweeten it. No need for a sugar-high this morning to set him on edge. “Or did you just wake up early to give yourself some love?”

The look Alexios levels at her is one he hopes conveys all his disdain for that question. Kassandra gives a theatrical grimace in response.

“Ouch, that bad?” she questions. Alexios turns back to his coffee. “Must be all that health food you eat, giving you nightmares.”

He doesn’t dignify that with a reply. Her spoon clatters down into her bowl a second later.

“What?” she demands at last, and he blinks and turns back to her to find that she is scowling and has crossed her arms over her chest. “What the hell did I do to piss you off today?”

Alexios blinks slowly at her, briefly wondering where he misstepped, and then his brain finally kicks into gear and he sighs and scrubs a hand over his face.

“It-” His voice is rough with nausea, and he has to cough and clear his throat before he can continue. “It’s not you, Kassandra. I’m sorry.”

Her scowl morphs slowly into a puzzled frown. “Then what?”

_His ears stopped ringing, but there was a blaze of pain in his right arm. Malik was screaming somewhere beyond the confused haze of battle. When Alexios finally got his act together enough to look up-_

Alexios turns away, clears his throat, and swallows a few times. “I’m sorry. It’s not you, it’s just…”

His hands are shaking. He sets down his coffee mug and clenches them into fists, willing them to stillness.

“…Alexios?” There’s a note of worry in her voice. He doesn’t reply. “…Do you want to talk about it?”

He shakes his head ‘no’. “Not… Not right now, Kassandra. I appreciate the offer.” Alexios tosses his sister a hollow smile over his shoulder and picks up his travel mug again. “Besides, you’re the one who reminded me I’m running late. I’d hate to waste your efforts.”

She snorts, but she’s still frowning at him with concern in her tawny eyes. They have the same eyes, the same hair color, the same mouth, but Kassandra, at seventeen, is softer and more rounded than Alexios will ever be. Her skin is unmarked save for that old scar through her lip that she got when he accidentally knocked her down in the driveway when he was ten and she was three. She’s not scarred by life, and that’s something that he’s thankful for every day.

“I wish you’d talk to me,” she mutters as he goes to pass by her. She’s not looking at him. “I’d listen, gladly.”

Alexios bends and presses his lips to the crown of her head. “I know, and I appreciate it more than I can say, Kassandra. S’agapó, brat.”

“Love you, too, maláka.”

He laughs at her use of his favorite all-purpose obscenity and kisses her hair again before he grabs his duffel and heads for the door. “I’ll be home early tonight, if all goes smoothly. Will I see you?”

“I’m out,” she sighs, and when he lifts an eyebrow, she mutters something he can’t make out.

“With who?” he asks.

“Diona and Pausanias, from school.”

Diverted, Alexios turns back to her with a frown. “Diona and Pausanias? Kassandra-”

“I know, I know, you’ve said it before.” She waves a hand at him dismissively, and that scowl is back. “I get it, you don’t like them, but they’re my friends-”

“They’re _not_ your friends, Kassandra,” Alexios growls.

“They are,” she snaps, “and why do you care, anyway?”

“Those tattoos they have?” He gestures to the left side of his neck, and damn if his blood pressure isn’t spiking. “Those snakes they both wear? Those are _gang_ tattoos, Kassandra! Kosmos Kult has been all over the news lately. They’re as bad as MS-13, and they’re recruiting anyone who looks like they might be solitary or unwanted-”

“But that’s my choice, isn’t it?” she shouts, and Alexios reels backward from the force of it. Kassandra is on her feet, now, fists clenched at her sides, and her glare could melt steel. “And it’s not like you’re ever around to do anything about it, anyway. What do you care?”

“I _care_ because you’re my _sister!_” he barks, and Kassandra’s face starts purpling. Alexios’s head is starting to spin. Nausea curdles the bile in his stomach. He grunts and braces his hand against the exposed brick of the kitchen wall. His face is tingling and suddenly he can’t feel his knees.

“Oh- oh, shit,” he breathes, and sinks to the floor. Kassandra is saying something, but Alexios hardly hears her. The world goes dark and quiet, and his right arm starts hurting again. He clings to the pain, uses it, grounds himself in the present, and fights tooth and nail for consciousness. He can’t afford to miss a day of work, not when their finances are so depleted from the month’s rent-

His stomach lurches. He gags, claps a hand over his mouth, but there’s no stopping it.

Hands yank at his arm. He clenches his teeth and pushes himself to his feet with Kassandra’s help, and she tugs him over to the kitchen sink just in time. Alexios shoves his head down into the basin and pukes so hard that stars flash before his eyes and fire races through his abdominal muscles. He coughs and heaves again, but nothing comes out, nothing but acid and the sip or two of coffee he took. As he sags against the counter, gasping for breath, his vision slowly clears. Alexios’s stomach is aching. He doesn’t remember crossing the room, but Kassandra is warm against his side and her arm is solid around his waist.

“Can you stand?” she asks softly once Alexios goes a minute without heaving. Her voice is even, carefully modulated. This isn’t their first rodeo with this. It’s been like this since Alexios came back from Kosovo with a bad arm and the corpse of his friend’s brother in a box in Cargo. He blinks a few times to clear his vision all the way, and then he turns on the tap and rinses out his mouth and the sink before he lets his sister lead him over to the table. Kassandra is looking a little concerned. “You didn’t throw up any food or anything. When’s the last time you ate?”

Alexios thinks… and thinks. His silence speaks for itself.

“You know what? Fuck you.” Kassandra scowls at him and quickly grabs a tupperware from the cabinet and dumps some of the Cheerios into it from the box on the counter. She leaves the bag open again when she screws a lid onto the plastic container and shoves it into her brother’s hands. Alexios blinks at the little plastic jar. “You go on and on about me hanging around with the wrong people when you’re not even taking care of yourself. Screw you, you hypocrite.”

She scowls at him for a moment and then she dumps her bowl into the sink with a clatter and grabs her backpack from where it’s sitting by the door.

“Kassandra,” he calls, but she does not reply. The door slams behind her. Alexios clenches his jaw and turns the tupperware of Cheerios over in his hands.

Happy fucking Sunday.

-|-

He’s late, of course. Between waking up late and his near-fainting and his argument with Kassandra and the Goddamned New York City Traffic™, it’s nine-thirty in the morning by the time he gets from Pomonok in Queens to the North Tower in Lower Manhattan, a full hour and a half past the time when he’s supposed to get there every day. Thankfully, Barnabas was there to let Brasidas in this morning so that he could open everything up, but the worst part is the knowing look Brasidas shoots him the second Alexios steps into the Hub after dropping his duffel in the locker room.

“Rough night?” the older man asks. His Greek accent is as thick as Alexios’s is; they both grew up in Sparta before their respective families immigrated to the States in the eighties and nineties. In fact, most of the people Alexios is close with grew up in Greece, or have Greek ancestry. That’s what comes from spending his formative years attending St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox church, near where he lives. Everybody knows everybody who’s Greek.

Alexios meets Brasidas’s gaze and gives a haggard nod. “Rougher morning.”

“Kassandra giving you trouble again?”

Alexios sighs. “Trouble is her middle name.”

Brasidas cracks a smile at the laconic statement, and then he gestures to the monitor banks. On the screens, people are going about their daily business. It’s a wall of motion. Normally, Alexios enjoys it. He thrives on monitoring the organized chaos of Corporate America in a way that few people can understand. Today, though? Today, he just wants some aspirin and a long nap.

He twists open his plastic jar of Cheerios, plunks himself down in a chair, and starts munching.

Brasidas does him the kindness of not pressing any further. He briefs Alexios on the day’s agenda- mentioning in the process that Kleio should be stopping by around noon for lunch- and Alexios nods along in all the right places and tries to pretend like it isn’t going in one ear and out the other while he slowly works his way through the tupperware and prays that the dry cereal will stay in his stomach. He still can’t remember the last time he ate, and when he thinks about it, that’s more worrying than he would like to admit.

_Kassandra’s right,_ he thinks. _I really haven’t been taking care of myself._

“Kassandra made me realize, this morning, that I can’t remember the last time I ate.” The admission slips out without him noticing he’s even spoken until he realizes that Brasidas has stopped talking mid-word. The older man’s blue-grey eyes linger on Alexios’s face, and Alexios’s cheeks heat beneath the stare. Brasidas says nothing, though. He’s a good listener, and they’ve been best friends for so long that he’s learned it’s better to wait Alexios out. This time is no different. Alexios swallows his latest bite of Cheerios and realizes he’s only made it about halfway through the container in the space of two and a half hours. “I didn’t even realize it until I almost passed out while we were… having a disagreement.”

“You mean shouting at each other at the top of your lungs,” Brasidas surmises. Alexios rolls his eyes and nods. “How long?”

“Say again?”

“How long?” Brasidas repeats. He’s patient with Alexios. He always has been. For all that there are only two years between them, Brasidas might as well be thirty-five, he acts so much like Alexios’s nonexistent older brother. “How long since you started feeling like that?”

Alexios thinks about it, and then shrugs and looks away. “Since I got home. It comes and goes. Most of the time, I’m fine.”

“But lately you’re not.”

“No.” Alexios swallows a thick lump of pride. “No, I suppose I’m not.”

“Malik and Kadar?”

Alexios nods. Brasidas faces forward again, glances over the monitors for a moment. Then he takes a breath and spreads his palms flat on the desk.

“It’s understandable,” he murmurs, squinting at a lady who’s gesturing emphatically at a secretary in the ground-floor lobby. “Today marks three years since it happened.”

Alexios reaches up and scratches at the back of his neck. He can’t look at the other man, and his arm is starting to hurt again. “I relived it earlier this morning.”

“Flashbacks are the soldier’s curse.” Brasidas falls silent for a moment. Then he takes a breath. “Bayek called me the other day.”

Alexios blinks at the non-sequitur, and finally sets aside his Cheerios. He has no more appetite for them. “He did? What’d he say?”

Brasidas shrugs. “That Malik is dragging Altaïr to the VA’s support group every week. Connor’s dad, Haytham, set it up after Connor came back and was diagnosed with PTSD. It’s been a surprising hit with our old company, from what I hear. Bayek invited me to come, and then told me to invite you, since you never answer your texts.”

He gives Alexios the Look™. Alexios sips coffee from his travel mug and studiously ignores it.

Alexios thinks of his cheap cell phone, dunked in a glass of water on his nightstand. It’s been sitting there for three weeks already, and he just hasn’t had the heart to pull it out again. “My phone had an unfortunate accident. I haven’t gotten a new one, yet.”

“Bullshit.” Brasidas shakes his head. “That’s a load of crap, and you know it.”

“I don’t exactly have a hundred-fifty dollars to blow on a new cell phone, Brasidas.”

“Then you get a damn Motorola with texting capabilities for fifty bucks and use that.” Brasidas leans forward and meets Alexios’s gaze. “You want to hide away from the world, get some peace and quiet to yourself? I know. I can relate.” He jerks his thumb over his shoulder at the monitors. “But this? Limiting your human interaction just to this isn’t healthy, Alexios, and it’s not you. You used to say you were going to take Kassandra back to Greece and sail around the Mediterranean in your grandfather’s sailboat, remember? What happened to that man?”

Alexios huffs and glances up at the monitor just in time to spot a familiar face going through the lobby. “That man realized that his grandfather’s sailboat would never survive the open sea. Then he went to war, and he never came back.” He nods to the monitor. “Kleio’s here.”

Brasidas stares at him for a long moment. Then he huffs and pushes back his chair, and goes to retrieve his sister. “Come to the next meeting, Alexios. You won’t regret it.”

“Is that an order, sir?” The question is snide, Alexios can admit, but Brasidas hardly bats an eyelash.

“Don’t make me make it one.” He vanishes into the hallway. Alexios stares at the monitors without really seeing them for several moments. On the screen that shows the lobby, he watches as Brasidas meets his sister and waves her through security, scrubs and all. She’s carrying a tray of lattes, or some other kind of hot drink if the Starbucks logo on the side of the cups is any indication. They’ll be back in the Hub in a couple moments. Alexios should compose himself before they get here, he really should.

He finds he doesn’t really care that much.

He stares unseeing at the monitors until the door opens behind him, admitting two familiar sets of footsteps. Alexios finally glances up when a slender hand settles on his shoulder, and Kleio’s radiant smile drains all the tension from his body within the space of a heartbeat.

Kleio sets aside her coffee tray and leans down and presses her lips softly to his. He parts his lips and kisses her thoroughly for the few seconds she lingers, and by the time she pulls back, she’s got her fingers threaded through the hair at the nape of his neck and is rubbing her thumb back and forth over the soft skin behind his ear. She licks her lips and gazes at him from beneath her long, dark eyelashes. The smoky look sends a jolt through him from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. Heat quickly pools in the pit of his belly.

Kleio kisses like nobody else he's ever kissed, and that's saying something.

“Good afternoon,” she murmurs, and brushes another kiss across his lips before she releases him with a smile and props herself innocently on the edge of the monitor desk. Brasidas is miming being gagged behind her back, but he stops the instant she turns and hands him his coffee. “Pike’s Place roast, a splash of almond milk, two pumps of white mocha, just how you like it.”

He flashes her a brilliant smile behind his thick, dark beard and tips the cup to her. “You’re a goddess, sis.”

“Blasphemy, then, from the man who was just making faces at me behind my back?” Kleio teases, and then pulls another cup out of the tray and presses it into Alexios’s hands. “Café au lait, whole milk, unsweetened.”

Alexios takes a sip and sighs with relief. “Brasidas is right. You’re a goddess, Kleio.”

She chuckles and tucks a strand of wavy black hair behind one ear, and her hazel eyes are glinting blue-grey in the light of the monitors, offset by the cornflower hue of her scrubs. He appreciates the way the color leeches into her irises and makes them more green than brown.

“I try.” She finally glances over her shoulder. “Slow day?”

“So far.” Brasidas seats himself back in the chair beside Alexios’s, and gives his younger sister a dry look. “Most eventful thing was Alexios showing up an hour and a half late.”

Kleio’s eyebrows shoot up, and she turns a concerned look on Alexios. He glances away. It takes a second for him to realize he’s rubbing his right bicep. The scars there are raised, three parallel lines of dull, throbbing aches, and he takes another drink of his coffee and tries not to see the worry in those eyes he loves so much.

A set of cool fingertips touch his cheek. He doesn’t look up.

“Alexios, what happened?” she asks. He doesn’t answer.

“I’ve been trying to get him to talk for most of the morning,” Brasidas mutters. “All he’ll tell me is that he had a fight with Kassandra and realized he hasn’t been eating.”

Kleio makes a soft noise in the back of her throat, and Alexios clenches his jaw on a snarl of ‘_I don’t want your pity’_ because he knows that, if he looks up, he won’t see pity in Kleio’s eyes. She’s the daughter of a soldier from a long line of soldiers, the sister of a soldier, and will be a soldier herself when she graduates, and as a surgeon in training, she’s well-accustomed to injuries and the marks they leave.

Both seen and unseen.

She’s two years younger than Alexios is. At twenty-two and sharp as a tack, she’s almost done with her final year of schooling, and once that’s over, it’s six years at least in the Army (if she can draw an active duty post) and then another two in the Reserves. She could make a career of it, if she wants to, and damn if she doesn’t have the smarts for it.

“Seventeen is a tough age, for a girl,” Kleio murmurs, “and Kassandra has a lot to deal with. Just give her time, Alexios. She’ll come around.”

He makes an incoherent noise deep in his throat and does not reply for a long moment. He’s watching the screens again, but at the same time, everything goes by without him really seeing it. Kleio waits him out. They’ve been dating two years, now, and have known each other even longer than that, and like Brasidas, she knows better than to press. With Kleio, Alexios knows he can open up, talk, let himself be vulnerable. It’s still tough, though. He’s been the strong one for so long- three years since Kosovo, two years since the crash that killed his and Kassandra’s parents- three years of bottling everything up so tight the pressure could probably turn a lump of coal into a diamond, and if that doesn’t make him think about Cameron Frye from _Ferris Bueller_, he doesn’t know what would.

_When did I turn into Cameron Frye?_

“I don’t know what to do,” he admits at length, and the words are barely more than a whisper. “She’s been hanging out with a couple kids from school, and they both have Kosmos Kult tattoos on their necks. I just… I don’t know what to do.”

Kleio presses his shoulder with her hand and steals a sip of his coffee. When Alexios looks up at her, she’s frowning, and her gaze is distant.

“Diona and Pausanias again?” she asks softly. Alexios nods.

“I’ve heard about them,” Brasidas mutters, and when Alexios looks over at his friend, Brasidas is frowning, as well, behind his cup and his beard. He drums his fingers on the desktop- t-t-t-tap, t-t-t-tap, t-t-t-tap- and takes a ponderous sip of his coffee. “Jacob tells me they had them down at precinct just last week for vandalism.”

Alexios hums an agreement. “I heard that, too. Thing is, I’m not sure how to get her to stay away from them.”

Kleio twines her fingers with his and rubs her thumb across his knuckles. “There is no way to do that, short of moving out of the city- or perhaps even the state.”

Alexios closes his eyes and leans back, slouches down in the seat and lets his head hang over the back of his chair like a child’s discarded ragdoll. “Given the gang’s nationwide status, I doubt we’d be able to escape them even then.”

Kleio’s answering chuckle is sympathetic. “Even then.” She pauses, and then she brings his hand to her lips and presses a kiss to his knuckles. Alexios cracks open his eyes and gazes at her from beneath his lashes, and the understanding on her features almost takes his breath away. “You know what? What are you two doing this weekend? You have Friday and Saturday off, right? Why don’t we all go to the bird sanctuary and see your Ikaros? Kassandra can come with us, and she can fawn over Brasidas, and maybe we can all try to convince her that we’re more fun to be around than Diona and Pausanias are.”

Alexios laughs at Brasidas’s sputtering and leans up and kisses Kleio soundly. _God, she has such a big heart._

He opens his mouth and almost asks her right there- _Will you marry me?-_ but then the door bangs open and Thaletas and Kyra storm in, bickering like an old married couple, and Alkibiades follows them, egging each of them on for his own pleasure. The moment is lost. Kleio kisses Alexios one more time- flicks her tongue along the seam of his lips in a move that is question and promise both- and then she leans back and hands a Tuxedo to Kyra and a Dirty Hippie to Alkibiades. When Sokrates joins them a moment later, Alexios heaves a long-suffering sigh and pulls Kleio down into his lap to make room for the sandwiches that Sokrates sets on the desk.

“You know,” Sokrates comments a little while into lunch. He and Alkibiades have been talking shop this whole time- they’re both financial advisors from the fiftieth floor- but the talk has come back around to Kassandra since then, and now Sokrates is pondering the dilemma with an intensity he usually reserves for his philosophy debates. “She’s probably looking to fill some kind of void. It’s been, what? Two years since the accident?”

_Two years, three months, and twelve days,_ Alexios thinks darkly, _but who’s counting?_

“A little more than that, but yes,” he replies instead.

“And she doesn’t really have any role models anymore save you.” Sokrates gestures expansively with his meatball sub. “And, obviously, you’re here working most of the time.”

Alexios can see where this is going. His head starts throbbing in an instant. “We all have to pay to live, Sokrates.”

“You’re still here most of the time.” He shrugs. “I’m just saying, she’s probably trying to find some attention, since she can’t always get it from you.”

The coffee curdles in Alexios’s stomach. He glowers at Sokrates. “Yes, I know, I’m a fucking absentee. We have to eat, and we have to pay rent and utilities, and I wasn’t born with the goddamn Midas touch. What the fuck more does she want?”

A soft touch to the back of his neck dims the anger with a few caresses, and Alexios can’t help the derisive thought that he’s acting like a pissy cat. Goddamn.

“I think what Sokrates is trying to say,” Kleio murmurs, “is that Kassandra misses her parents and wants her brother, but you’re always busy, so she’s not getting that.” She strokes the nape of his neck again when Alexios fumes silently. “Alexios, I’ve known Kassandra since she was in diapers. She knows that you’re doing your best, so she’s trying to find validation elsewhere so that she doesn’t place a burden on you. That’s why I suggested we take a day-trip to the bird sanctuary. It’ll get us all out of the city, and she and you can spend time together, and she and I can have some girl-time.”

Alkibiades pokes his head around Thaletas and offers Alexios a shit-eating grin. “Besides, it’ll give her time to moon over Brasidas. ‘Oh, Brasidas, I love your muscles-’”

“Maláka,” Brasidas growls.

Kyra barks a laugh and twines her hand in the braid at the nape of Thaletas’s neck, and teases, “Don’t worry, Brasidas, it’s only statutory rape for six more weeks.”

A round of laughter ripples through the group, and suddenly Alexios finds himself smiling for the first time today. These guys… None of them are his family by blood, but suddenly he’s struck by the realization that they _are_ his family. They, and the rest of his unit from Kosovo, are his family in a way that is difficult to describe.

At least he knows that Kassandra will be cared-for, if something ever happens to him.

“All right,” he mutters, and Kleio and Brasidas look over at him with the same almond-shaped eyes, though Kleio’s are hazel and Brasidas’s are the blue-grey of a well-oiled gun. “I’ll ask her about the Bird Sanctuary tonight after she gets home.”

“Good,” Thaletas snorts. “Invite us along, and Kyra’ll have her eating out of the palm of her hand.”

Kyra graciously swats her husband on the back of the head.

-|-

The rest of the day passes at a crawl. Halfway through the evening commute, the AC on his car decides to start blowing hot air, so he spends the ride from Long Island City to Pomonok with the windows down and the stench of diesel fumes thick and nauseating in his nostrils. The Goddamn New York City Traffic™ is one of the many things that Alexios absolutely hates about this city, and if the subway didn’t give him panic attacks every time he tried to ride it, he would prefer that. It’s a moot point, though. The screech of subway brakes sounds too much like tearing metal; the clatter of the wheels on the rails reminds him too strongly of machine-gun fire. He can’t do the subway.

He finally stops at the Target off Queens Boulevard and kills an hour or so picking out a cheap cell phone per Brasidas’s insistence. By the time Alexios gets home, he’s dog-tired, sweating through his shirt, and so tense his shoulders are cramping from it. He wants water and a shower and some sleep, and maybe some food if he can get his stomach to settle long enough to keep something down.

Alexios fumbles his keys into the lock and then toes his shoes off by the door with an exhausted sigh. “I’m home!”

No answer. He blinks and then glances down at his watch. Seven-thirty-seven. Kassandra should be home, by now… right?

“Kassandra?” Nothing. Unusual… but not unexpected, given their argument this morning.

Alexios frowns and tosses his duffel into his room before deciding to take advantage of having the house to himself.

He turns the shower on as hot as he can stand. By the time he steps into the steaming stream, the mirrors are fogged despite the ventilation fan whirring loudly overhead. Alexios hisses at the first touch of near-scalding water on his skin, but he’s good at forcing down the hurt by now, and the heat leeches some of the painful tension out of his shoulders. He breathes slowly and deeply- in through his nose, out through his mouth- and focuses on relaxing every muscle in his body, one by one, starting with his neck, and then continuing down. The lump of stress dissolves from his throat. The knot loosens between his shoulders. He unclenches his stomach with an effort, then works his way down his arms and butt and legs, all the way down to where his toes are pressed hard against the bottom of the shower.

Alexios sighs and leans his forehead against the tiled wall, and tries not to feel as exhausted as he is.

It takes an effort of will to make himself move, but his hair is dirty enough as it is, and he stinks something terrible from the drive. Washing his hair takes five minutes. Lathering up and rinsing takes five more. By the time he finally steps out of the shower, Alexios can admit he feels at least marginally more human. The towel is soft where he pats his hair dry and then wraps the cloth around his waist.

Now to business.

The cell phone box is sitting innocently on his bed. It’s a cheap one, a flip phone barely suitable for texting, but it’ll serve the purpose. He pulls out the phone and plugs it into the wall, powers it up, and then fetches his contacts notebook from his desk and flips through it. The first number he programs into the phone, he knows by heart.

_Miss Sassy-Pants,_ he types for Kassandra. The second one, Brasidas’s, he knows equally well- _Brass Monkey-_ and the third, he texted every day for the six months he was overseas before The Charlie Foxtrot, so he plugs that one in, too.

_Love of my Life,_ he types. It’s sappy and sentimental, and he almost changes it just in case anybody else sees the caller I.D., but then hits ‘save’ instead and just as quickly dials it.

It rings twice. Alexios can see her exact expression in his mind’s eye. He pictures that little crease that will appear between her brows, the way her eyes will flash and narrow as she squints down at her phone screen, the pout that will purse her lips.

_Click._

_“Hello? Who is this?”_ Her voice is like velvet, soft and rich, and it’s a balm to his ears. A smile curls his lips in spite of himself.

“It’s me. Alexios.”

Her tone lightens in an instant to pleased surprise. _“Alexios? You finally got a new phone?”_

“I did.” He coughs out a chuckle. “It’s… not much. Just a flip phone that looks like the nineties coughed it up. Not exactly a PalmPilot. It’ll text and call. Not much else.”

It’s been a while since he actually had a phone conversation with anybody. It shows.

_“It functions, though, right?”_ Kleio chuckles, and the relief in her voice simultaneously makes him smile and sends a pang of something like guilt through his stomach. _“Hold on. I’ll give you Brasidas’s new number. You have everyone else’s numbers in your index, still?”_

“I do.” He glances at the black book sitting on the duvet beside him. It still has a skull and crossbones doodled on it in white ink, as well as a unicorn, and a Hello Kitty sticker, all courtesy of Kassandra. “Lay it on me. I’ll log it in my book.”

Kleio laughs. _“Good,”_ she says, and rattles off the phone number, pausing every three digits so that he can pencil it into his ledger beneath Brasidas’s name. Then, teasing,_ “You’re planning on keeping this phone a while, right? Should I save this number or hold my breath?”_

“Saving it might be a good idea.” Alexios’s voice drops a little, and he can’t resist adding a seductive note to his words when he says, “At least then you’ll know who’s calling to ask what you’re wearing.”

She’s quiet for a second. Then she gives a soft snort. _“Alexios, I’m still at the university, you know.”_

“Oh? Kinky.”

_“Hey!” _she squawks, and then laughs, _“Shut up, I didn’t mean it like that.”_

He lets a grin curl his lips. He’s always enjoyed getting a rise out of Kleio, and now that she’s his girlfriend, it’s even more fun. Kleio’s pretty straight-laced; he’s pretty sure she’s actually still a virgin, because as dirty as her mind gets sometimes, she still won’t touch him below the belt, and he’s even teased her on occasion by wondering if she has ever even touched herself.

She still has not given him a straight answer on that front, come to think of it.

“Is that so? Because I did.” He glances down at his lap. _I wonder…_ “I’ve actually been thinking about you for most of the evening, you know.”

There’s a long silence at the other end of the phone. She’s quiet so long that Alexios starts chewing his lower lip. His heart hammers in his throat. How will she react? Did he overstep himself too far?

_“…I’ve… actually been thinking about you, too,”_ she finally admits, and Alexios’s breath leaves him in a rush. Kleio murmurs something indistinct in the background, and then he catches a rustle. A moment later, he hears a click, and then her voice is back in his ear. _“I, um, I’ve been thinking, lately, you know.”_

He knows that tone. Alexios frowns a bit and then turns and stretches his legs down the bed.

“What’s wrong?” he prompts her, and swallows. “Is everything all right?”

_“Fine. Everything’s fine.”_ Her sigh crackles through the phone in a burst of static. _“Just… Just give me a minute. This isn’t easy for me to say.”_

His heart plummets into his stomach, but though everything in him is screaming, _this is it, this is the end, she’s going to break up with you,_ he bites his tongue almost bloody and swallows down the anxiety that’s threatening to make his hands start shaking.

_“Alexios?”_ Her call of his name brings him back to her. “_I didn’t lose you, did I?”_

“No. No, I’m still here.” Alexios licks his lips and clenches his fist in his towel. He tries to keep his tone neutral and open, but it’s difficult to hide the apprehension in his voice. Again, he asks, “Is everything all right?”

_“It’s fine.”_ She exhales. _“I just… I wanted to talk with you. Is it all right if I come over after my rounds?”_

His stomach jolts. Kleio has never asked if she can come over in the evening, before. “That’s… unusual.”

_“I know. I just wanted to see you.”_

He swallows his trepidation. “Kleio. You know I would love to see you. You’re always welcome here. Just…” He takes a deep breath and asks, “Is this about… us?”

_“What do you mean?” _She sighs. _“Alexios, don’t hedge, please.”_

_All right._ He asks directly, voice carefully modulated. “Are you going to break up with me?”

_“What?”_ She sounds genuinely shocked, and that’s more of a relief than he would like to admit. _“What? No, no, of course not! I just…”_ She exhales again._ “You know how I am about… talking. About my troubles. Today’s just been really rough. I only wanted to see you, if that’s okay.”_

_Oh._ “Oh. Of course.” He huffs a laugh. “You had me worried for a moment, there.”

She chuckles. _“Sorry. No, I’ve just been doing some pretty heavy thinking about my future, lately, and I want to talk to you about it before I make any decisions. I could use a sounding board, for this one.”_

The admission warms him from head to toe. “I’m happy to listen, and advice is always free.” He pauses. “Well, unless you have a psychiatrist’s license. Then it costs about a grand an hour.”

She laughs so hard she starts snorting into the phone. When she finally calms, he can hear the grin in her voice.

_“Thank you, Alexios,”_ she tells him. _“I really needed that. You always know just how to brighten my day.”_

He’s smiling, too. “Hearing your voice always brightens mine, as well.” He pauses. Swallows. “I love you, Kleio.”

She’s quiet a second. Then, _“I love you, too, Alexios. I’m off at eight. Okay if I head over then? I won’t get there until probably nine or so.”_

“That’s fine. I’ll be home brushing up on my Spanish.” He glances at the dictionaries and word lists and ‘D!rty Spanish’ books spread across his desk. “The test is on Wednesday.”

_“I still can’t believe you’re set for Quantico in the spring.”_ He can almost hear her shaking her head. _“My boyfriend, the intelligence analyst in training. Now _that’s_ sexy.”_

He preens a little. “Damn straight. Hey, could you grab some gyros from Danny’s Deli before you come over? I’ll repay you in wine, a period flick, and a shoulder massage.”

_“Ooh, now you’re speaking my language. You trying to score tonight, or something?”_

He perks up. “Is that an option?”

She just laughs. _“I love you so much. See you at nineish.”_

“Love you, too, Kleio. See you then.”

_“Bye.”_

“Bye.” He stares at his phone for a second after he presses the ‘end call’ button, and then he smiles to himself and gets to his feet. He throws on some sweats and a tee-shirt, and then he grabs a peach and a glass of water from the kitchen, sits down, and starts studying.

An hour passes, and then a half-hour, and by the time nine-fifteen rolls around, Kassandra still is not home, and Alexios can admit he’s getting worried. He keeps glancing at his phone where it’s sitting at his elbow, and then turns his gaze back to the Spanish before him. It’s not much of a shift before he’s thinking in Spanish, but his thoughts keep slipping back into Greek the longer he goes without hearing from his sister.

Finally, he swears softly and picks up the phone. He scrolls through the contacts list until he stops at_ Miss_ _Sassy Pants_, and hits the green ‘call’ button and puts the phone to his ear.

It rings four times, and then goes to voicemail. _“Hey, Jerkface, leave a message.”_

_Beep._

Alexios swallows. “It’s Alexios. I finally got a phone, so… it’s about nine-fifteen, Sunday night. Haven’t heard from you and wondering if you’re all right. Just… Call or text me and let me know you’re okay. Okay? The number…” He pauses long enough to double-check the number, and then recites it twice. “All right. Talk to you soon, Kassandra.”

He hangs up, and then very deliberately sets his phone aside and turns back to his word lists.

He’s barely at it five minutes when the buzzer lets him know he has a visitor. Alexios pockets his phone and abandons his lists, and a second later, he’s in the doorway.

Kleio barely gives him time to get the door open before her hand is in his hair and she’s kissing him like it’s going out of style. Alexios gives a murmur of appreciation and pleasure alike and wraps his arms around her waist, turning and guiding her inside so that he can kick the door closed behind them. Kleio drops her school bag on the floor at their feet with a thud of books and a jingle of keys, and then she’s got her arms around his neck and- oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, but Alexios never knew she could kiss like this.

He groans softly and then ducks and picks her up right there in the hall, and she wraps her legs around his waist and keeps kissing him. Alexios carries her into the kitchen and sets her down on the table. When she arches against him, he ducks down and mouths at her neck, and grinds his hips up against hers. He’s half-hard already and raring to go. She moans, and then she pulls back.

Kleio cradles his jaw in her hands and gazes up into his eyes, and Alexios’s heart skips a beat when he catches the expression on her features, the swollen wetness of her lips, the soft glaze of her eyes in the low light from the lamp over the sink and the rosy glow of arousal in her cheeks. He’s never seen her like this, before, never seen her looking this _willing_, and it sends a bolt of fire straight to his groin.

“Kleio,” he breathes, and he leans down and nuzzles her nose with his, feathers a kiss across her lips. Kleio leans up and seals her mouth across his. Her hand settles on his lower back, and then slips lower and dips beneath the waistband of his sweatpants, and- and why didn’t he wear any underwear? Holy cow. Her skin is warm where she caresses his bottom, her palm callused and dry.

“Please,” she whispers, and dips her own head and plants an open-mouthed kiss on the underside of his jaw. Alexios gives a broken little moan and leans into her. She’s tiny but firm, a firebrand in the circle of his arms, and Alexios presses against her without thinking, trying his damnedest to envelop her, to make her a part of him. “Please, I need you.”

Alexios’s breath hitches. He pulls back, looks her in the eye, and asks, “Why?”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “You mean… you _don’t_ want to do it?”

“No! No, it’s not-” He sighs and kisses her, slow and deep, and she moans and bucks against him. “It’s not that. It’s just… You’ve never seemed like you wanted to go that far, before.”

“Well, I want to, now,” she mutters, and nibbles on his lower lip until Alexios groans.

“Kleio,” he pants. “Kleio, I want- Just- Just wait a moment.”

Kleio huffs and leans back, and a warmth disappears from Alexios’s back as she finally sets a bag of warm sandwiches on the table beside him. He runs his hand down her back and bites his lip- and then he lets go of her entirely. He takes a step back, and then another. When she bites her lip and looks away, and moves to cross her arms over her chest, he grunts a protest in the back of his throat and catches her hands in his.

Alexios looks Kleio in the eye, and then he feathers a kiss across her lips and pulls away again.

Half-turning, he bites his lip on a grin, and squeezes her hand. “Just- Just stay there. Right there.”

Kleio’s eyebrows shoot up, but Alexios is already gone, trotting down the hallway to his room. He ducks at his bedside and fishes around beneath his bedside table where he hid- ah. There it is. He pulls out the little silk box with a triumphant grin, and rises and turns to return to the kitchen-

-only to give a rather unmanly shriek-and-flail when he’s suddenly faced with Kleio, who’s standing in the doorway, watching him.

Alexios fumbles the little black box, and it lands on the wooden floor with a soft thump. They stand there for a second, frozen, Alexios watching Kleio as her hazel gaze lands upon the box lying innocently at her feet. She blinks a couple times. Then her lips part.

“Alexios-”

“Kleio,” he interrupts her in a sudden panic, and grabs her hands and holds on tight. His own are shaking as he gazes into her eyes. “Kleio, I know- I know after you broke up with Leonardo, you said you didn’t want anything serious. I know you said you didn’t want to get in too deep, and I know I said that was fine, but…” He hesitates, and then, slowly, he lowers himself to one knee. “Kleio Argyris, I’m not going to lie. You are the love of my life, and I want to spend every day of my life loving you, honoring you, and worshipping you from now until the day I die.” He takes a breath and swallows the nervousness that’s tightening his throat. “Will you marry me?”

Kleio stares at him for so long Alexios is certain she’s going to say no, that this is the end.

Then Kleio kneels before him, and picks up the box from the floor, and then she throws her arms around him and hugs him tight.

“Of course,” she whispers, and then she’s laughing, and sobbing, and she pulls back and kisses him thoroughly. “Of course, Alexios. Yes. Yes, I want to marry you.” She laughs again and presses her forehead to his, and she’s beaming at him, radiant in her joy. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Relief and joy sweep through him, and he chuckles, deep and rich, and he pulls back just enough to pull her hand down in between them. He takes the box from her hand, and opens it.

“It’s not much,” he begins, but Kleio kisses him, cutting it off before he can finish his statement.

“It’s perfect,” she whispers. “It’s perfect because it’s from _you,_ Alexios. I’m not agreeing to marry a ring. I’m agreeing to marry _you.”_

Something unfathomable swoops low in the pit of his stomach, and he pulls back just a little. He meets her gaze.

She’s serious. She’s telling the truth.

“By God and Christ and all the Saints, I love you, woman,” he rasps, and he captures her lips with his. He slides the ring onto her finger, and then she’s got her arms around his shoulders.

“I love you, too,” she whispers. “Take me to bed, Alexios?”

He does, gladly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Greek Translations:**  
_Maláka:_ Bullshit, asshole, etc. Our misthios's favorite all-purpose expletive.  
_S'agapó:_ I love you (unconditionally).
> 
> And here's the rest of the cast! Well, most of them. We'll see Phoibe in a little while. Kleio is my OC. She's Brasidas's younger sister. Also, you might have noticed that everyone is much closer in age, here, than they were in the game, or even historically. This is mostly for Kassandra's sake. Have I mentioned that I'm a big fan of Brasidas/Kassandra?
> 
> So, quick disclaimer. Disclaimers. Whatever.
> 
> Firstly, I (obviously) don't own Assassin's Creed.
> 
> Secondly, I don't live in New York City. I've never even visited (though it's on my bucket list!), so if anyone has any anecdotes they'd like to share, any locations you'd like to have featured, let me know in the comments and I'd be happy to feature them with credit to you and add some authentic flavor to this story! (Right now, I admit, I'm going off Google Maps, some housing websites, and pure imagination.)
> 
> Thirdly, I picture "Kosmos Kult" as being something like another MS-13. Kassandra is hanging out with the wrong crowd, of course.
> 
> Fourth, I'm doing my best here to portray Alexios's PTSD. I'm doing some research and going off my own stress reactions for reference, though magnified tenfold. Again, if there's anything I can add or change, please let me know.
> 
> Fifth, I'm a die-hard fan of Brasidas/Kassandra and Kyra/Thaletas, but I freely admit, I'm not a huge fan of Neema. I understand the need for her in the game (Natakas, for Kassandra-players) and in the continuity, but she's definitely not my favorite character. I think Ubisoft really dropped the ball with the love interests in this game. (To be honest, as far as characters go, I think they really dropped a LOT of balls, even with Alexios and Kassandra.) Since Ubisoft was lazy and didn't give Alexios and Kassandra unique storylines, the intense chemistry with Brasidas is there with Alexios, too. Congratulations, Ubisoft: I actually kind of ship Alexios/Brasidas. That being said, I can't write slash for shit, and frankly, Alexios is just... sex incarnate? Freaking heck. He's bloody Eros. Kleio is my solution to my own frustrations. So, welcome to Alexios's girlfriend, my OC, Kleio.


	3. Countdown: Kassandra & Alexios, 10 Sep. 2001

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kassandra is getting mixed up with the wrong crowd. Alexios and Kleio take their relationship to the next level, and then Alexios tries to deal with Kassandra's teenage drama the best he can. Chapter rated M for sexual situations.

* * *

“When I was young, I trusted my strong arms and was among the first. Now pain has crushed me. I have endured the agonies of war, and struggled through the dangers of the sea, but you have challenged me and stung my heart.”  
-Homer, _The Odyssey_

* * *

Kassandra is expecting Alexios to be pissed. Her brother is overprotective and half the time it drives her batshit crazy, but she knows it’s coming from a good place, so she usually puts up with it. It’s four in the morning on a school day, though, and Alexios has always been rabid about her grades, even when she was a kid.

_You have to be able to support yourself,_ he used to tell her. _You can’t rely on someone else to support you. Keep your grades up and get into a good college. Start a good career. Surround yourself with good people. Do that, and you’ll never find yourself in want._

That was before Kosovo, though. Alexios went over with a squadron of Marines as a corpsman, and he came back different. Some days, Kassandra doesn’t even recognize the man she now lives with as her _brother_. For all Alexios works himself to the bone to support them, to keep Kassandra in an apartment and fed and not starving out on the streets, there are days when Kassandra catches him staring off into space with a black look on his face, and knows that there’s a part of him that never came back from the Balkans.

Then there are mornings like yesterday when she hears him groaning through their shared wall, but where other young men might be pleasuring themselves, Kassandra only ever hears Alexios’s pleading cries of, ‘No! No, Kadar, don’t- Get down- No! Please, no!’

Alexios dreams of blood and death, and it breaks Kassandra’s heart in pieces every time she has to break him out of it.

He never acts like he remembers the dreams, even though they leave him haggard and haunted afterward.

Her phone beeps. Kassandra blinks and finally checks it- she’s been down in the subway tunnels for most of the night, and everyone knows you can’t get service down there- only to see that there’s a voicemail waiting for her as well as a text from an unknown number. Both are from before midnight. Frowning, she checks the voicemail first.

She’s startled when her brother’s voice meets her ear.

_“It’s Alexios.”_ His voice is low and tense, and a note of worry she has seldom heard from him before thickens his Greek accent, rounding his vowels and softening some of his consonants._ “I finally got a phone, so… it’s about nine-fifteen, Sunday night. Haven’t heard from you and wondering if you’re all right. Just… Call or text me and let me know you’re okay. Okay? The number…”_ He pauses, and then recites the number twice_. _A beat. Then he sighs softly. He sounds exhausted._ “All right. Talk to you soon, Kassandra.”_

The message ends. A stab of guilt twists Kassandra’s stomach, and it only gets worse when she opens the text message and finds that it’s from Alexios, as well. The time stamp shows that he sent it almost five hours ago, around eleven-thirty or so.

_Kass, worried abt u. Where r u? Pls call me. Have news. Alexios_

She almost texts him back. Then she realizes that she’s five minutes from home, and she’ll see him soon enough. Kassandra saves the number to her phone and hurries down the street, dodging past the dark alleyways between the houses and apartment buildings, and ducks inside the front door of her building.

She sees them as she’s closing the door behind her: a pair of shadowy figures lurking in the alleyway across the street. They catch her staring, and come into the light. Kassandra knows their faces. One is Lagos, a nerdy guy who went to school with Kleio’s brother, Brasidas. The other is a woman she knows only by the nickname of Nyx.

Fitting, for the current hour.

The pair stare at her for a long moment. Then Nyx makes the Kosmos Kult gang sign at Kassandra- a motion like scratching someone with her first two fingers, or like a viper biting someone- and then she and Lagos turn and depart. A chill runs down Kassandra’s spine as she catches sight of the snake tattoos crawling up the sides of their necks.

The message is clear.

_We’re watching you._

Kassandra closes the door to the foyer and hurries up the stairs to the apartment she shares with Alexios. She hopes he hasn’t waited up for her; she’s already going to be in enough trouble without him being sleep-deprived and worried sick.

The door comes unlocked with a simple turn of her key, and it smacks against something heavy as she pushes it open. Kassandra frowns and peers down at the object in question. It’s a book bag, heavy with its contents, and it has a patch on the side that says ‘Argyris, K.’

Argyris. That’s Kleio and Brasidas’s last name. Kassandra purses her lips and pushes the bag out of the way, and steps into the darkened hallway. There’s a bit of light filtering in from the light over the sink, but the rest of the apartment is dark and quiet.

At first, Kassandra thinks the room is empty. If Kleio’s bag is in the foyer, then that probably means that she and Alexios finally gave in and screwed each other, because Kleio has never come over in the evenings, before. So, they’re probably sleeping back in Alexios’s room.

That’s what she reasons, until she sees the dark lump slumped against the arm of the couch.

Kassandra freezes. Is she caught? Will he explode at her? But then the figure draws a deep, slow breath and releases it just as sluggishly, and Kassandra realizes that the person is sleeping. Judging by the deep resonance of the air moving through what can only be a broad chest, she guesses it’s probably Alexios. She confirms this a second later when she approaches him and finds that it really is her brother. Alexios is dead to the world, lying half on his belly with one arm hanging off the side of the couch. He’s dressed, at least- he’s wearing a tee-shirt and a pair of loose sweatpants- but he’s shivering slightly in the cool air. His hair is loose around his ears and partially obscures his face, but Kassandra can make out the dark smudges beneath his eyes and the crease to his brow even in the dim light.

He must have waited up for her. Another pang of guilt runs through her.

Kassandra pulls the blanket off the back of the couch and gently spreads it over Alexios’s slumbering form. His brow furrows, but then the crease smooths out, and the years fall away from him as Kassandra runs her hand over his hair.

His lips part. He draws a deep breath. Still asleep, he asks, “Mater…?”

Kassandra swallows the lump in her throat and leans down and kisses his temple. His skin is warm- warmer than normal- and she thinks he might be a little feverish.

“No, Alexios,” she murmurs. “It’s Kassandra. I’m home. Get some sleep, _adelphós._ I’ll see you in the morning.”

He mumbles a soft, “Kass,” and then he sighs and goes still again. His muscles go lax, and Kassandra runs a soft touch over the back of her brother’s neck. His eyelids flutter just a bit. Then he sighs again and a soft smile curls his lips.

Good. About time he dreamed of something other than war and death.

Kassandra tucks the blanket a bit more securely around his shoulders and then leaves him there. His PTSD makes it dangerous for her to try to wake him or move him, and he’s peaceful right now, besides. She won’t disturb his rest when he so desperately needs it.

A figure is standing in the doorway of Alexios’s room when Kassandra pads down the hallway on silent feet toward her room, which is beside Alexios’s and is the farthest one from the front door. Kleio’s eyes gleam at Kassandra in the soft glow from the night light on Alexios’s desk. Kleio is only five years older than Kassandra is, and has been like a sister to her for as far back as Kassandra can remember. Now, Kleio gives Kassandra a look of mingled worry and relief, and the older woman wordlessly reaches out and pulls Kassandra into a hug before she can pass her.

“I’m glad you’re home safe,” Kleio whispers into Kassandra’s ear. Kassandra holds herself stiff for a second, and then she exhales and melts into the embrace, wraps her arms around Kleio’s waist, and leans her head onto Kleio’s shoulder. Kleio reaches up and runs her hand over the crest of Kassandra’s head. “You had us worried when you didn’t return his messages.”

Kassandra nods. “I know. I’m sorry. I was… I didn’t have any reception.”

“I’m just glad you’re home safe.” Kleio’s words are said without judgment, and it’s a relief Kassandra wasn’t expecting. This is why she loves Kleio. Kleio pulls back and reaches up and smooths a few flyaway strands of hair back from Kassandra’s face. “I have a feeling you and your brother need to have a talk, later, Kassandra. He was very worried about you.”

Kassandra frowns a bit and glances back out toward the living room. “I can tell.” She pauses, and then turns back to Kleio, taking in her attire with a raised eyebrow. Kleio’s wearing one of Alexios’s t-shirts, and not much else. “Did you two…?”

She can see Kleio’s blush even through the darkness, but Kleio has a backbone of steel, and though she’s bashful, she’s honest.

“We did,” she replies. Kassandra watches her bite her lip. “Kassandra, Alexios asked me to marry him.”

Kassandra’s eyebrows shoot up. “Really? About time. He asked Brasidas for his blessing months ago.”

Kleio giggles, and she and Kassandra grin at each other. Kassandra hugs the woman she has always thought of as her sister, and Kleio returns the embrace.

“I’m happy to hear it,” Kassandra admits, “and I’m sorry I woke you and made you worry.”

“I forgive you,” Kleio replies. “It’s Alexios you’re going to have to convince. He’s worried you’re getting mixed up in something over your head, you know.” She pauses and then pulls back again. Worry tilts the corners of her mouth downward and furrows her brow. “I saw them from the window, standing out there. I haven’t told Alexios, but you need to consider the idea that Kosmos Kult is interested in you beyond your friendship with Pausanias and Diona.”

The thought makes Kassandra squirm. She’s heard of Kosmos Kult. Who hasn’t? They were all over the news last week in relation to a string of killings and robberies throughout the country. But Kassandra likes hanging out with Diona and Pausanias. Pausanias is Kassandra’s cousin on her mother’s side, distant though the relation is, and Diona is a lot of fun to be around.

“Just be careful, okay?” Kleio’s voice brings Kassandra back to her, and Kleio reaches up and tucks a lock of brown hair back behind Kassandra’s ear and then presses a kiss to Kassandra’s forehead. “Remember that no man- or woman- is an island. Your actions affect those around you, as do the actions of those you associate with. Their actions will affect you, also. Just be careful that those ripples don’t swamp you, okay?”

Kassandra nods, and hugs Kleio again. “I’ll be careful. Goodnight, Kleio.”

Kleio kisses Kassandra’s cheek. “Goodnight, Kassandra.”

They part, then, and Kleio vanishes down the hall while Kassandra heads into her room and closes her door behind her. A moment later, Kassandra hears a soft voice in the living room, and then Alexios’s answering grunt. A couple minutes pass. Then she catches the shuffling gait of her brother and Kleio as Kleio guides Alexios back down the hall, probably still mostly asleep, and into Alexios’s bedroom. The door shuts softly a second later. Kassandra catches the low murmur of Kleio’s voice and the quiet creak of the bed, and then they go silent again.

Kassandra listens for a few minutes, curious, but nothing happens. Eventually, she shakes her head and changes into some pajamas, uses the restroom and brushes her teeth, and then she falls into bed, finally tired. When she closes her eyes, she hears it when Alexios or Kleio shifts, catches the sound of a contented sigh, and then peace descends once more.

Kassandra falls asleep with a smile on her face.

-|-

The day dawns warm and sunny, without a cloud in the sky. Alexios is awake. He knows he is, because his bladder is insisting he get up and empty it, but he’s boneless and wrung-out, relaxed in a way he hasn’t been in years, and he’s reluctant to move as a result. He’s reluctant even to open his eyes, reluctant to break the peace of the moment even with that little motion. There’s someone sleeping beside him. The body is small and curvy- a woman- and her bottom is pressed against his groin in a way that is most distracting. Her breathing is deep and even. He knows because not only is her back resting against his chest, but his arm is wrapped around her waist- and he’s got one pert breast cupped in his hand.

God, those breasts. They’re just the right size to fill his palms.

The scent of her perfume is what gives her away, though. Sweet-pea blossoms have been Kleio’s favorite flower since they were kids, and her favorite perfume is scented with them. He would know it anywhere, and although the scent is faded at the moment, it still teases his nose when he presses his lips to the soft skin of the nape of her neck. She has such a graceful neck. Her neck, her shoulders, the curve of her spine and that delightful ass… he loves every inch of her. Kleio is the most beautiful woman Alexios has ever known, and now…

Now, she’s his.

A silly grin stretches across his face, and he lays a series of kisses across her shoulder- _trapezius-_ and then over the line of her neck- _platysma-_ and then to the hinge of her jaw just below her ear-_ sternocleidomastoid-_ where she proved, last night, to be very sensitive. True to form, a shudder runs through her body, and Alexios sits back and watches as she comes awake. Her brow furrows a bit, and she purses her lips, and her nose wrinkles adorably before her eyelids flutter open. Her hazel gaze is still unfocused with sleep, but when he runs his hand down her belly and slips his fingers between her thighs, she bites her lip on a gasp and blinks herself fully awake. Kleio’s breathing deepens the more he caresses her. Within seconds, she’s moaning softly and clutching at the sheets beneath her head and bucking against his fingers.

Alexios gulps and then groans when she turns to him suddenly and kisses him. Her mouth is liquid heat and she reaches over and pushes his sweats down over his bottom, pulls her own panties down, and he barely manages to get a condom on himself before she’s throwing her leg over his hip and guiding him inside her. Their breath hitches together, and then they sigh, and Alexios grins, and he holds her to him as they move together.

Every rock of their hips sends them higher; every breath and kiss exchanged makes his heart pound in his breast, and when she crashes down around him only a few minutes later, he follows her over the edge with a gasp, comes to her deep and hot in the most perfect kind of bliss he knows. There’s nothing else like it.

They lay there a while afterward, entwined together between the sheets. Alexios dozes a little. He’s not sure how much time passes, but he comes awake the second she feathers a kiss upon his lips.

“Good morning to you, too,” she mumbles into him, and they both grin lazily before he kisses her slow and deep. After a moment, she hums. “Alexios?”

“Hm?”

“What time is it?”

He inhales and draws back just enough to squint over at the clock on his bedside table- and then swears colorfully and bolts out of bed and begins the hunt for a clean shirt and pants, because it’s six-forty-five and he needs to leave in fifteen minutes if he wants to get to work on time.

_“Maláka,”_ he mutters as he shoves one leg and then the other through his pants. “I can’t be late again.”

Kleio rises behind him. When he turns to grab his Sig from the bedside table, she’s right there- and then her hand is on his dick through his unzipped fly, and Alexios’s eyes nearly cross. She gives him a few gentle tugs, pulls off the condom that Alexios quite forgot about. It’s enough that the stimulation turns to pleasure again. Then she pecks him on the lips and tosses the used condom into his trash can… and goes to her knees before him.

Alexios buries his hands in her hair and actually whines when she takes him into her mouth. It’s not long before he’s panting. “Kleio- Kleio, I have to go-” His vision goes white, and he gasps, “Ah- _maláka!_”

She just hums around him and pulls off with a soft pop, and he watches with hazed vision as she gives him a coy little smile and swallows her prize. He pulls her to her feet and kisses her thoroughly, tastes his own come on her tongue, and damn if that isn’t one of the hottest things he’s ever experienced.

“Fuck, woman,” he gasps into her lips. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

Kleio chuckles into him. “_Une petite mort, bien sûr.”_

“_Tentadora,”_ he growls, and she laughs again.

“Could you give me a ride?” she asks, and pulls away and starts collecting her scrubs from where they flung them last night. Alexios’s mouth goes dry when she pulls off the t-shirt she borrowed to sleep in- one of his, and damn if that doesn’t make him feel at all possessive- and she bares all before him for a second before she goes about donning her bra and panties. She prefers bras without underwire, but sports bras look good on her and Alexios has no complaints.

“Oh, I’ll give you a ride, all right,” he rasps, and she giggles and glances at him over her shoulder while she ties the drawstring on her scrub pants.

“To the WTC, you dope.” She’s grinning, though, and the insult turns into a tease instead. “I can catch the subway to the university from there.”

“Sure,” he murmurs, and inwardly mourns the loss of the view as she tugs her top over her head and shoves her arms through the sleeves. “No time for cooking breakfast, though.”

They finish dressing in record time, and while Kleio runs into the kitchen to grab them some food for the road, Alexios quickly uses the bathroom and then peeks his head into Kassandra’s room.

The lights are off and the room is dark, but in the sliver of light that spills across the bed from the open doorway, he can make out his sister, lying face-down on the bed in the kind of graceless sprawl that only a teenager can achieve. Her breathing is deep and even, and even though she’s supposed to be up and getting ready for school, Alexios can’t bring himself to wake her. Instead, he enters the room on silent feet and pulls her blanket up over her shoulders, and tucks it in around her neck just how she’s always liked it.

He lingers for a second. Then he leans down and presses his lips to the top of her head, runs his hand over her coffee-colored hair, and whispers “S’agapó, Kassandra” into the silence.

Then he’s gone, grabbing his duffel and joining Kleio at the front door, and they head downstairs hand-in-hand for the drive to Manhattan.

They make it to the World Trade Center by eight- right on time- and Kleio chatters excitedly the whole drive there. Alexios can admit he tunes out a lot of what she says (He’s even told her so, many times before), but Kleio doesn’t mind. She says she’s just happy to be with him, and she knows how to get him to pay attention if there’s something important to say, so he lets it wash over him and soaks in the joy she’s radiating. It’s endearing, and it lifts his spirits like nothing else has done in years, and her hand fits perfectly in his where they’re entwined on the console between their seats. It always has. He enjoys the feel of the calluses on her palm where they rub against his. Her fingers are cool, but her palm is warm, and his ring on her finger is a hard contrast to the pliability of their skin.

It makes him grin like a fool.

He’s still grinning when they park and walk up the stairs of the North Tower. Brasidas is already waiting for them, and his eyebrows shoot up when they approach him together, holding hands, with Kleio still wearing the same clothes she wore yesterday.

“Well,” Brasidas muses with a wry tilt to his lips, “at least it looks like it’s not a walk of _shame,_ per se.”

Kleio and Alexios exchange glances, and then Kleio holds up their entwined hands so that Brasidas can see the ring on her slender finger.

“We got engaged,” she says, and she’s beaming, so radiant that it makes even Alexios feel like he’s walking on clouds.

Brasidas blinks at them for a second, and then a grin splits his face and he laughs. Before they can even reach him, he’s crossing over to them and pulling them both into a tight hug.

“About fucking time!” he chuckles, and then he pulls away and kisses Kleio’s cheek, and then thumps Alexios on the back. “I’ve been watching you two moon over each other since you were teenagers. Alexios, I gave you my blessing months ago. Why didn’t you ask her sooner?”

Alexios’s cheeks warm, and he glances down at Kleio’s glowing expression. “I wanted to be sure she knew what she was getting herself into.” He clears his throat and then gestures vaguely to his head. “With the PTSD and everything. You know.”

“I knew about it the day you called me from the field hospital after it happened,” Kleio says, and her smile gentles a bit but her happiness is still shining from her features. She gazes up at him while Brasidas unlocks the doors for the day. “Your voice was shaking so badly you could hardly speak, and I knew then what it would mean, if we were to continue being friends. I knew what I was getting into when we started dating. I knew six months into it that you were the man I wanted to marry.”

He huffs out a laugh and presses his lips to the back of her hand. “I don’t deserve you, woman.”

“Nonsense,” she scoffs, and leans up and kisses him sweetly. “If you didn’t deserve me, I wouldn’t be here.”

“You two are disgusting,” Brasidas chuckles.

-|-

The day passes uneventfully enough. Brasidas declines to hear any of the details of last night (”No. Just no. _Ela,_ why would you even think I would want to hear about you fucking my sister? _Maláka._”) and after Alexios has a good laugh at his friend’s reaction, they buckle down for a normal Monday. They’re in meetings for half the morning, and by the time Alexios clocks out at five, he’s more than ready to be done with the day.

As he and Brasidas turn over the Hub to the Second Shift guards, Alexios grabs his duffel and turns to his friend.

“So? You want to come over and have a drink or two?” He gestures in the general direction of Queens. “I promised Kleio, last night, that if she brought over supper, I’d repay her with wine, a period flick, and a shoulder massage, but we- ahem- never got around to that.”

Brasidas makes a sound of disgust in the back of his throat and pulls a face. “Stop reminding me. I do _not_ need to imagine you two doing it. As to the drinks? You know I’m always game for that, but I already had plans.”

“Oh?” Alexios lifts his eyebrows, intrigued. “Hot date?”

“Blind date.” Brasidas rolls his eyes, and then complains, “I swear, Alkibiades always picks the airheads. What kind of man does he think I am?”

Alexios chuckles and claps his friend on the shoulder. “He probably thinks you need to get laid, is what.” Brasidas mutters something about Kassandra, and Alexios narrows his eyes at the other man. “What’s that about my sister?”

Brasidas stops in his tracks and turns wide, horrified blue-grey eyes on Alexios for a second before he colors and looks away. Alexios’s eyebrows shoot up.

“Wait. Wait.” Alexios frowns and turns to face Brasidas full-on, and grips the older man’s shoulders. Brasidas still won’t look at him. “Are you saying you’re actually interested in my sister? Kleio and Kyra’s teasing isn’t just teasing?”

“I said no such thing.” He still won’t look at Alexios, though, and that’s telling.

“Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t have any designs on my baby sister.” Alexios stares him down, and when Brasidas stays silent, Alexios curses softly, and that’s when Brasidas finally faces him again. The look in Brasidas’s eyes is one of abject misery. “Shit, Brasidas.”

“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” Brasidas hisses, and he jerks away from Alexios- or tries to, without success. Alexios holds fast, and Brasidas turns back to him with a snarl. “Damnit, Alexios, I haven’t even held her hand. You don’t have to protect her, because I’m not-”

“I approve.”

That brings Brasidas up short. They only have an inch difference between their heights, but the way Brasidas gapes up at Alexios gives Alexios the impression of a child staring up at an adult as though expecting to be punished.

“You- what?” Brasidas stammers.

Alexios doesn’t look away. “Brasidas, you’re my best friend, and a good man besides. There’s no better man I can think of for my sister, and if she chooses you, I will happily give my blessing.” He pauses. “Kyra’s right, though. Wait six weeks before you ask her out so it’s not statutory rape.”

Brasidas splutters so hard Alexios briefly worries that the man’s about to have an aneurysm or a stroke. “B-But I- Alexios, I-” He takes a breath. “I’m nine years older than she is. You’re supposed to be threatening to shoot my balls off for even thinking about her as anything besides a little sister.”

“Kassandra is her own young woman, and strong-willed besides.” Alexios shrugs, and then steers his friend toward the door. “Besides, there was twelve years’ difference between my _mater_ and _pater._ It’s not unheard-of, even if it’s unusual.” He tosses Brasidas a smile. “It’ll be weirder if I marry your sister and you marry my sister, but not illegal.”

Brasidas huffs a disbelieving, half-hysterical chuckle, but before he can say anything, they make it outside and are greeted by the sight of Kleio, leaning against the wall with her face tilted up to the sky, soaking up the sunlight.

“Kleio,” Alexios calls, and a smile spreads across her face. She tilts her head down again and opens her eyes before pushing herself straight and greeting both of the men with a hug and a kiss- on the cheek for Brasidas, and on the lips for Alexios.

“Good evening,” she says sweetly, and then glances over at her brother. “What’s got you so rattled?”

Brasidas is still staring at Alexios. “Alexios just gave me his permission to ask out Kassandra after she turns eighteen.”

“Really?” Kleio hums and loops her hand into the crook of Alexios’s arm when he offers it to her. “Well, I’m not surprised. Myrrine and Nikolaos were twelve years apart.”

Brasidas sputters a few times, and then he groans and stumbles to catch up to them, cursing at Alexios all the way.

-|-

Kleio goes home with Brasidas to get a shower and a change of clothes, so Alexios stops by the market on his way home and grabs some things for supper. He’s half expecting the house to be empty again- he’s not sure if Kassandra is still angry with him or not, and boy, it wouldn’t be the first time- so it’s a surprise when he opens the door to their apartment and finds his sister’s backpack sitting tidily on the floor beside the shoe rack with her sneakers tucked neatly away on the top shelf.

“Kass?” he calls as he sets aside his duffel and toes off his own shoes, and stacks them in a haphazard pile on the middle shelf beside his sneakers and his one pair of sandals. There’s no reply. Alexios frowns. Then his sensitive ears catch the soft sound of singing coming from the kitchen, and his worry eases. “There she is.”

He pads into the kitchen without a sound, and leans in the doorway for a second, smiling at the tableau before him. Kassandra has the entire table covered with papers and books, and there’s a toolbox sitting on the corner of the table, holding down one half of a map. The box has been flung open to expose the fine arts supplies within: vine charcoal, conté, Copic markers, colored pencils, chalk pastels, and oil pastels sit beside three different kinds of erasers and a geometric compass and a ruler. That toolbox is Kassandra’s most prized possession besides the sketchbook lying open on the other side of the map.

His sister has a pair of aviator headphones over her ears, and she’s bobbing her head in time to whatever song it is that she’s listening to- N’Sync, from the sounds of it, or maybe the Backstreet Boys. Maybe, if he’s lucky, it’ll be 98° or Sting, or maybe even Aerosmith or Lynyrd Skynyrd or Motley Crue. If his luck is really bad, it might be some of that new-fangled rap music that he hates so much. He watches her work for a few minutes, and then it seems that the chorus of a song comes on, because Kassandra bops her head a little faster and starts singing along.

“True to your heart, you must be true to your heart-”

_Disney. _Alexios barks a laugh, and it’s loud enough that it startles her. Kassandra jumps and her head snaps up. She stares at him for a second with huge eyes. Then Alexios loses it, and a second later he’s laughing so hard he has to grab onto the wall to keep himself upright. When he finally manages to compose himself, Kassandra is pouting at him, and when he sees that look on her face, he has the absurd notion that she looks like a wet cat. He can almost see her pointed ears laid back against her skull and her tail lashing back and forth.

He presses his lips together and bites back another snicker with a true effort of will.

No, he muses as he smiles at her and holds up his bag of groceries. No, Kassandra looks like a little lion cub, not a domesticated housecat. There’s a reason their grandfather was known as the Lion of Greece, after all, and it had nothing to do with the fact that his parents had named him Leonidas after the greatest of Spartan kings. Alexios and Kassandra both inherited their tempers from Leonidas, straight down through their mother, Myrrine.

“Peace?” he asks, arching one eyebrow.

Kassandra’s nose scrunches. Then she scents the air. Her voice is too loud when she asks, “Is that chicken I smell?”

“It is.” He heads over to the counter and sets down the bag before pulling out the box of chicken he picked up as well as the bagged salad and a bottle of Kassandra’s favorite raspberry-balsamic vinaigrette dressing. She finished up her old bottle two days ago, so she’ll probably appreciate this. “Broccoli, too, and some deli meat for lunches.”

She’s quiet for a moment, but he doesn’t ask whether or not she heard him. She’ll have stopped her music, by now, and with the delectable scent of roasted chicken filling the air, it won’t be long before she sets aside her music and homework entirely and joins him at the counter. Alexios knows his sister entirely too well. After all, he practically raised her.

Sure enough, he hears the chair slide back just as he’s beginning to carve up the rotisserie chicken, and then Kassandra is at his elbow, reaching down a bowl from the cabinet so that she can dump the salad into it. She stashes the bagged lunchmeat in the fridge, and then she goes to work on the broccoli. Both of them like eating it raw, so she simply cuts it up into bite-sized pieces and tosses them into the salad along with a few tablespoons of the dressing. Kassandra finishes at about the same time Alexios does, and together, they work on clearing off Kassandra’s impromptu workspace so that they can eat.

A moment later, they’re chowing down. Kassandra shreds her chicken into her salad and mixes it all up, and Alexios eats his on the side, and for a long time, they don’t speak, simply eating in silence while Kassandra avoids Alexios’s gaze and Alexios tries to think of something to say to his sister. They’re finishing up their salads by the time he finally remembers that Kassandra said she had a couple of tests today.

“So?” he asks, and when she glances over at him, startled, he offers her a smile and continues, “How did your test go?”

Kassandra shrugs and looks down at her bowl. She stabs at a stray floret of broccoli. “It didn’t.”

Alexios frowns, sets down his fork, and pushes his bowl away from himself. “Why not?”

She shrugs again and doesn’t answer. Alexios purses his lips and fights back the anger that suddenly rears its ugly head. “And your calculus test? How about that one?”

Another shrug that is really not a reply. The anger gets hotter, and Alexios clenches his jaw for a second before he takes a deep breath. He chooses his words very carefully and makes sure that his tone is modulated.

“Kass, what happened?” he asks. “It’s not like you to miss a test.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

He presses a bit more, but keeps his voice low. “Is there something going on? Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine, all right?” she bursts out, and suddenly she’s glaring at him, hand clenched around her fork like she wants to jump over the table and shove it into his throat. Alexios recoils and then just as quickly his fight-or-flight instinct kicks in, and he tenses for an argument. “What I do with my life is none of your business, so stop fucking asking!”

Alexios’s blood pressure skyrockets and for the second time in two days his heartbeat sings in his ears.

“It _is_ my business!” he barks back, and clenches his fists on the tabletop. He wrenches his voice back under control. “And if everything _were_ fine, you wouldn’t be shutting me out like this.”

“Why do you care?” She glares at him. “It’s not like we ever talk anymore, anyway!”

_“I care because you’re my sister and I love you!”_

Kassandra fumes at him, but doesn’t reply. Alexios clenches and loosens his fist, grinds his teeth a second, and then takes a deep breath and tries to calm his heart rate. He swallows and lowers his voice again.

“Kass, I’m sorry.” He looks her in the eye. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been here for you much, lately, and I apologize for that. I’m sorry I haven’t been talking with you-”

“You’ve _never_ talked with me!” she snaps, and shoves back her chair and pushes herself to her feet. “You always talk _at_ me, not with me, and you know what? I’m through with trying.”

Alexios’s heart drops into the pit of his stomach. His tone goes flat. “What.”

She glowers at him and hisses, “Don’t. Talk. To me. Anymore.”

“How is that going to solve anything?” he demands, and his voice rises. “You asked me to talk to you yesterday morning. What’s changed since then?”

“_What’s changed is that I realized you don’t want to be here!”_

He stares at her, astounded by the shout and the accusation alike, and shock and guilt suffuse him when he catches sight of the tears in her tawny eyes.

“You’re not taking care of yourself,” she continues, not shouting anymore, but only just, and she slams her fist into the tabletop hard enough that it rattles their bowls and forks. “You’re always working, and if you’re not working you’re either out with Kleio or at the gym or asleep or locked in your room. You don’t want to be here, you don’t want to be alive, and you certainly don’t want anything to do with _me,_ so _go fuck yourself.”_

Alexios sees red. In a flash, he’s on his feet, towering over her, and all of a sudden, it’s not about whether she’s right or he is, anymore.

“Don’t you _dare_ say that to me,” he snarls, and clenches his fists so hard his knuckles grind against each other and the sinews stand out stark in his forearms. His arm aches. “Do you have any idea- _any idea-_ what I do to keep you fed? Clothed? Housed? Do you have _any fucking idea_ what I gave up to keep us together after Mater and Pater died? Huh? _Do you?”_ He smashes his fist into the table hard enough that his knuckles split and the table _cracks._ He seethes at her, and for once, he doesn’t _fucking_ care that she’s white as a sheet. “I sacrificed _everything_ to keep us together, to keep you out of the system, to keep you in a good school. Mater and Pater wanted you to have a good future, Kassandra, and YOU’RE FUCKING_ THROWING IT AWAY!”_

His bowl shatters against the brick wall as his bellowed words fade into the sound of his strained breathing. He trembles with barely repressed fury, and the violence of the emotion scares him. He doesn’t show it.

“I gave up a college education, Kassandra!” he shouts. “I gave up the opportunity to get a fucking _law degree_ to work at a shit job with a Bachelor’s degree instead, and made sure you could have a good life and good opportunities, and so that you could grow up in the house of someone who cared for you.” His voice is getting hoarse. He stops for a second, fuming, panting from the outburst, and then he wrenches his volume back under control. “And you know _why_ I gave it all up?” She doesn’t answer, just stares at him, eyes huge in her pale face. Alexios bares all his teeth and pounds his fist into the table again. The wood groans under the abuse. “Do you _fucking_ know why?” Still nothing. He takes a couple deep breaths and then stabs his finger into the top of the table. The wood is sticky with pooling blood. “Fucking _answer_ me, Kassandra. You _owe_ me a _fucking_ answer, because I did not sacrifice my _whole fucking future_ for you just so you could let your goddamn grades drop and let it all go to hell.”

She stares at him for a second, lips compressed into a hair-thin line, and then she swallows visibly and slowly shakes her head.

“Why?” she croaks, and the tears streak her face. “Why would you do something like that?”

He leans forward, looks her straight in the eye, and snarls, “Because you’re my sister, and I fucking _love_ you more than _anything_ in this God-forsaken world, and I would do it all over again the exact same way if I had to because you are worth _every. Single._ **_Goddamn _**sacrifice, Kassandra.”

He’s panting by the time he finishes, and Kassandra is staring at him as though she’s waiting for his legs to give out from under him. Frankly, Alexios is trembling so hard he’s almost waiting for himself to collapse. He takes a deep breath and holds his little sister’s gaze.

“Don’t you get it?” he asks quietly, and lays his palms flat on the table. His knuckles have been laid open to the bone. They’ll need stitches. “Do you get what I’m saying, Kass? You are the most precious person in the world to me, and I would do _anything_ for you. _Anything. _I will protect you to my last breath, and I will live for you even when I want nothing more than to curl up in a ball and die, and that? That will _never_ change. I promise you that with God as my witness. That will _never_ change.”

He’s exhausted, suddenly. The anger evaporates as quickly as it came, and it leaves him wrung-out and hollow and takes all his strength with it.

Kassandra is crying. She’s sniffling quietly, not sobbing or anything, but she’s crying nonetheless, and if Alexios weren’t so pissed, he’d feel guilty for upsetting her. Right now, he just hopes she can see how much he actually cares. He slumps back into his chair with a sigh and runs his hand- his left, unbloodied hand- over his face and then exhales slowly and buries his face in his hand.

“It’s almost eight, Kassandra,” he murmurs. “Go sit down at your desk and write letters to each of your teachers. Apologize to them for missing school today, promise it will not happen again, and then request the opportunity to convince them to let you take their tests a day late. Be sincere and mature in your writing. Don’t use a template. Tailor each letter to its appropriate teacher.” He closes his eyes. “Tomorrow, bring the letters to each of those teachers at school. Apologize in person and give each teacher his or her letter. Let them read it, and then plead your case.”

She doesn’t move. She just stands there, looking for all the world like he just told her all over again that their parents were dead.

_Alexios was twenty-one when he came back from Kosovo, body littered with shrapnel scars and his mind battered. He was twenty-two when his parents were hit by a drunk driver on the way home from their anniversary supper. They were killed instantly, and it was up to Alexios to tell his fifteen-year-old sister that their parents were never coming back. Kassandra had never looked so devastated as she did after those words escaped his lips._

He brings himself out of his memories and finds that Kassandra is still standing there.

“_Go,_ Kassandra.” He doesn’t look up. “Make this right. Don’t waste the chances you’ve been given. Take advantage of them.”

She swallows, sniffles, and then without a word, she pads silently out of the room, her breath still hitching. Alexios waits until he hears the soft click of her door shutting before he bows his head and buries both hands in his hair, blood and all.

That’s how Kleio finds him. She lets herself in with the spare key he gave her ages ago, but he doesn’t acknowledge her arrival until she settles a hand on his shoulder. When he inhales and turns damp eyes up to her, Kleio’s brow creases with silent pain, and she leans down and presses her lips softly to his.

_I know,_ her kiss says. _I understand. Let me heal you._

She’s always been a healer, his Kleio. Alexios nods his consent, and she fetches her medical kit, which she always keeps in her bag. He doesn’t flinch when she cleans the cuts on his knuckles with peroxide, doesn’t react when she gives him a local anesthetic, doesn’t flinch at the sight or feel of her suturing the worst of the splits on his knuckles. He just watches her work and focuses on the graceful flicks of her fingers and wrist.

“Dare I ask what the bowl did to deserve your wrath?” Kleio asks softly as she ties off the last suture in the cut over his middle knuckle. “Were you aiming at Kassandra?”

“No,” he mutters, and nods to where Kleio is currently sitting on his right-hand side. “She was standing where you’re sitting now. I just…” He blows out a breath and props his chin in his free hand.

“Another argument?”

He nods. Alexios is silent for a moment, and then he briefly recounts the argument for her, keeping it to the bare facts.

“I just don’t know what to do,” he concludes with a frustrated sigh. “I don’t know where she got the idea that I don’t care for her, or I don’t want to be around her, or that I’m suicidal or something. I suppose I’m a bit depressed, yeah, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love her, or that I’d ever leave her alone by choice.”

Kleio doesn’t reply. She finishes stitching up his knuckles and applies an antiseptic ointment to the wounds, and it’s not until she’s winding a bandage around his hand that she speaks.

“I’m glad you finally told her that,” she says. “Did she mention anything about last night?”

He glances sharply at her. “No. Why?”

Kleio purses her lips, clearly debating with herself.

“Kleio?” He lifts an eyebrow at her. “Does this have anything to do with why she’s pulling away from me?”

Kleio sighs and finally closes up her kit. She takes his hand in hers and starts talking. Alexios goes cold when he hears about Kassandra not getting home until four in the morning, and he goes colder still when Kleio tells him about the gang members that were keeping watch outside the building, who left when Kassandra arrived. When Kleio describes the tattoos on the necks of the man and woman, Alexios clenches his fist again hard enough that it pulls at his new stitches and then carefully spreads both palms flat. His hand sticks against the blood still coating the tabletop. His jaw is so tense it’s beginning to hurt, but he takes a deep, measured breath.

“Did you see their faces?” he asks.

Kleio shakes her head. “It was too dark to see them clearly from your window. They seemed like they knew Kassandra, though, and I could just make out the general shape of the snake tattoos.”

Alexios nods. There’s not much else for it, honestly. If Kleio couldn’t see anything in the dark, there’s nothing to be done but keep an eye out.

“Come on,” Kleio murmurs, and tugs at his hand until he glances up at her. She pulls him up and leads him out into the living room. “Relax a bit. I’ll clean up out there.”

She turns toward the kitchen, but Alexios keeps hold of her hand. When she turns quizzically to him, he tugs her down, down into his lap, one knee on either side of his hips. He tilts his head up, parts his lips- and then pauses and just leans his head down into the crook of her neck and wraps his arms around her waist. He holds her loosely, savors her warmth and the softness of her breasts and thighs against him. Kleio wraps her arms around his shoulders and cards her fingers through his hair. She knocks the tie out of his bun in the process and spills his thick brown hair around his ears. She just keeps stroking his hair, the base of his skull, the nape of his neck, until the tension drains out of his shoulders and he slumps against her with a soft sigh.

“Will you stay?” he asks. It’s a question spoken softly, though he won’t blame her if she declines. “I understand if you don’t want to deal with the drama, but-”

“Yes.” Her simple acquiescence relieves a burden from his shoulders. “I love Kassandra, and I love you, Alexios. I’m happy to stay.”

He swallows, and closes his eyes. “Thanks, Kleio.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! If you've enjoyed the story this far, I would really appreciate it if you would tell me what you think. Every comment and kudo lets me know what I'm doing right or wrong, and helps me improve. Thank you so much!  
**Greek translations:**  
_**Adelphós:** Brother._  
_**Maláka:** Shit, asshole, bullshit, idiot, etc._  
_**S'agapó:** I love you (unconditionally)._
> 
> **French translations:**   
_**Une petite mort, bien sûr:** A little death, surely._
> 
> **Spanish translations:**   
_**Tentadora:** Temptress._
> 
> **Author's Notes:**  
Okay, so here's the Countdown, chapter 2! Next chapter, we return to Alexios at Ground Zero.
> 
> First, thank you so much to everyone who's reading this! I appreciate the kudos and bookmarks I've gotten, and the fact you're even reading this means a lot to me. Thank you!
> 
> Please let me know what you think! Love and hugs!


	4. Ground Zero: Alexios, 11 Sep. 2001

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Back in the present, Alexios finds another soul lost in the darkness and blood.

* * *

“Then Heaven decrees, in peace to end my days and steal myself from life by slow decays! Unknown to pain, in age resign my breath, When late stern Poseidon points the shaft of death; To the dark grave retiring as to rest; My people blessing, by my people bless’d.”  
-Homer, _The Odyssey_

* * *

The haze clears slowly from his mind. He didn’t intend to fall asleep, and now his leg is cramping and threatening to explode into agony with the slightest motion. How long has he been down here? Alexios checks the light filtering down through the pipe with groggy eyes, and coughs softly. It’s very warm, in here. His ribs hurt.

Judging by the light coming from the pipe, it might be sometime around early to mid-morning, maybe midday if he’s lucky, though for all he knows it could already be ‘tomorrow’, if he managed to sleep the day away. He’s stiff enough that that might be the case; the blood crusted in his pants is rock-hard and dry, and he can’t feel his left leg at all. Alexios pries his fingers under the tourniquet with a grimace and pulls it apart and away from his thigh. Blood rushes back into his leg. It hurts so much he groans deeply from the pain, but despite that, the fact that he can still feel at all gives him hope. When he probes gingerly down around the piece of rebar sticking out of his thigh, some fresh wetness greets his touch, but it’s not nearly as much as it was before. That’s promising. Seems his wound may have clotted up after all.

He closes his eyes again and leans back against the pipe. Something is chirping loudly not far away. A hard object digs into the left side of his butt; with a frown, Alexios reaches around himself and slips his hand into his back pocket.

Something hard and plastic meets his questing fingers. His phone? He removes it and examines it in the low light. The tiny front screen is cracked and dark, but when he flips the cover open with shaking fingers, the interior screen lights up. It’s scrambled and the numbers are jumbled, but when he shakily presses the green ‘send’ key, a dial tone comes out.

A spark of hope lights in his heart.

Alexios’s breathing picks up as his trembling fingers press one button after another. He does his best to steady them as he types_ 9… 1… 1._ It takes him two tries, but finally he manages to send the call through.

One ring. Two.

Someone picks up. “_Nine-one-one. All first responders are currently dealing with the situation at the World Trade Center. What is your emergency?”_

Alexios takes a couple deep breaths that gurgle alarmingly in his chest.

“I’m… I’ve been buried,” he finally gets out.

Silence. Then, _“What is your location?”_

Another shaking, wet breath. “One World Trade Center, two-eighty-five Fulton Street, New York City-”

He breaks off, suddenly coughing, and when he puts the phone back to his ear, the operator is almost shouting into her end of the mike.

_“Sir! Sir, just hold on. Do you know where you are? Which tower were you in when they fell?”_

Alexios’s mouth tastes like iron and salt. He swallows.

“North Tower,” he rasps. “I was… I was in…” He thinks. His head is getting foggy. “Core stairwell… Ground floor. There’s… There’s a pipe sticking through to where I’m at. I can see daylight.”

_“I’m directing first responders your way. What’s your name?”_

He actually has to think for a second. For some reason, all that comes to mind is his old rank and designation.

“H-Hospital Corpsman, F-First Class…” His lips form the rest of it more by rote than by actual recognition. “Alexios Agiadis, codename Eagle-Bearer… I’m… I’m a security guard… I don’t…”

_“What’s your status, doc?”_

Alexios swallows. Training takes over.

“Uh-” He takes a deep breath. Pain shoots through the left side of his ribcage, and there’s liquid bubbling in his lung there. “Broken ribs, left side,” he rattles off. “Punctured lung. Can’t tell how bad. Fluid accumulating in lung. Impalement wound in left thigh near femoral artery. Piece of rebar, maybe two feet long, two inches diameter. Used my belt as a tourniquet. Bleeding sluggish. Hypovolemic shock imminent.” His head throbs. “Possible concussion. Unsure how bad. Lucid enough.”

_“Okay,”_ the operator says._ “Okay. I’ve alerted first responders in the area as to your location. Hold on, Doc. Just hold on. Just-”_

_“-hold on!” Alexios bent over Malik and pressed down as hard as he could. His own blood ran red and hot down his arms from the wounds in his right bicep and left shoulder, and a cut through his left eyebrow dripped blood into his eye, obscuring his vision. “Malik, you’re not allowed to die on me!”_

_Malik choked on blood and then groaned deep in his chest as Brasidas finally finished cinching down a tourniquet around what was left of the other man’s arm. The shrapnel from the grenade had not only taken Kadar’s life, but a piece of flak had sheared Malik’s arm clean off just above the elbow and had lodged itself in the man’s chest cavity. Alexios was putting pressure on the wound in Malik’s chest and holding a pressure bandage to it until Brasidas could help him get Malik up and wrap the bandage around his chest._

_“K-Kadar?” Malik asked. His voice was little more than a wheeze._

_Alexios glanced over at the mangled pile of flesh and fabric that used to be Kadar, and squeezed his eyes shut before turning back to Malik._

_“Don’t you worry about Kadar,” Alexios retorted, and pushed down harder. Malik choked back a howl of agony. “Just focus on getting-”_

_“-you out of there alive. Okay?”_ The operator’s voice brings Alexios back to the present. He coughs weakly.

“What?” he asks. “What?”

_“Is there anything there that you can use?”_ To her credit, the operator doesn’t miss a beat._ “A signal, some kind of noise, anything that can help the emergency workers find you?”_

Alexios blinks slowly and glances around himself. He can’t see anything past his immediate proximity.

“Just-” He breaks off coughing for a second, and then puts the phone back to his ear. “Just give me a moment.”

He holds the phone out in front of him and hits the down arrow button to light up the interior screen again. It’s a paltry light, but it illuminates the area better than it was, and that’s when he sees the black smoke collecting at the top of the space he’s trapped in. He swallows.

Something’s blinking in the far corner. It’s making a chirping noise, but he can’t make out what it is.

Alexios puts the phone back to his ear. “There’s… There’s something blinking on the far side of the… the space. It’s making a chirping noise. I… I might be able to bring it over near this pipe.” He swallows and glances down at his thigh. “I’ll find something to hit on the side of the pipe. Tell them to listen for the Morse Code distress signal Ess-Oh-Ess.”

_“All right. What’s your phone number?”_

It takes him a moment to think of what his new number is. When he remembers, he slurs it out and the operator confirms it.

“I… I have to put the phone down, now,” he mumbles. “Can’t reach the device. Gotta crawl to it. Oh, God… There’s so much smoke.”

_“My name is Cosette. The firefighters will be there soon, Alexios. Just hold on.”_

“I will,” he promises, and then he presses the ‘end call’ button, carefully folds up the phone again, and slips it back into his pocket.

Then he swallows and glances down at his leg. There’s no way he’ll be able to crawl over to the other side of the room with that big chunk of rebar sticking out of his thigh, and he’s shaky enough without adding that agony to it, but he has no choice. They need a signal of some kind so that they can find him. He considers the problem carefully for a moment.

Alexios shoves his hands into the light filtering in through the pipe, and presses his fingertips hard into the skin on the back of his opposite hand. When he pulls them back again, the pressure has left white fingerprints that fade at a sluggish pace that would be alarming if he weren’t so dizzy. He’s already close to death. At this rate, he estimates he has an hour or two before he bleeds out entirely, as long as the rate of the bloodflow doesn’t change from its current sluggish trickle. That means he can’t just remove the rebar for the sake of his mobility. Alexios grinds his teeth. Only one thing for it, then. He reaches down and cinches the tourniquet down as tight as it will go- biting back a scream as he does so- and then he lays himself down on his back, bends his bad leg at the knee so that the rebar does not hit the ground, and begins dragging himself across a carpet of pulverized concrete and sharp metal toward the chirping sound in the corner.

It’s agonizing. Every drag of his back along the floor sends a new wave of dizzying pain sailing through him, and the smoke is getting thicker the farther away from his pipe he goes. Alexios shuts his eyes and lets his ears and hands guide him.

His shaking fingers meet tough cloth.

Someone gasps. Alexios opens his eyes as a choking sound fills his ears, and finds himself two inches from a familiar face, covered by a gleaming white mask.

“…Connor?” Alexios asks, unsure at first whether or not his eyes are playing tricks on him- but no. When he gently pulls off the mask, Connor Kenway stares back at him. His dark eyes are huge in his dusky face, and Alexios has never been happier or more horrified to see his friend in his life.

Connor sucks in a wheezing breath, and it sounds like he has a punctured lung if the wet gurgling is any indication.

“A-” He coughs, and blood flecks his lips and the concrete dust below his chin. “Alexios.”

Alexios swallows. “Hey, Sarge. Can you move?”

Connor groans and tries to move his arm. Something shifts, and then he howls and vomits up a rush of blood.

“Fuck,” Alexios breathes.

-|-

Between the two of them, they manage to get Connor free enough that he can crawl out from under the wreckage he was trapped in. His oxygen tank is miraculously still intact, as is his locator box, and by the time Alexios manages to help his friend back over to the pipe, the smoke is thick enough that they have to stay flat on the ground or they can’t breathe.

Alexios sets the chirping locator box on the ground beneath the pipe, and then grabs a stray piece of rebar from the rubble near his head. Then he flops down beside Connor with a soft groan and reaches for his buddy’s hand.

Connor’s palm is clammy when Alexios divests him of its thick, protective glove and seeks his pulse.

“Is your radio intact?” Alexios gasps, and swallows down blood from his lung.

Connor wordlessly holds up the smashed remains of what was once a functioning radio, and Alexios bites back a curse.

“All right,” Alexios murmurs, “let me see you.”

“’Kay, Doc,” Connor wheezes in reply. Alexios flips open his phone again and uses its faint light to examine what he can see of Connor’s chest area. Connor, like Alexios, has a piece of rebar sticking out of him, but Connor’s has impaled him just below his ribs on his left-hand side.

“Jesus,” Alexios breathes, and Connor coughs out something that might have been a laugh under any other circumstances.

“That bad, huh?” Connor asks, and then he groans when Alexios leans over him and puts pressure on the wound. “Ah- ah, fuck, you dick!”

“So, fancy meeting you here. How the hell did you end up in the bottom of the dogpile?” Alexios asks a question with an obvious answer just to distract his friend, and Connor grimaces in response. “You draw the short straw or something?”

Connor coughs out a chuckle. “Nah. Tryin’ t’impress a girl. Got my ass handed to me by a goddamn building in return. Ah- ah, fucking fuckity- _fuck_-”

Alexios hands Connor his phone. “Call nine-one-one. Tell them to tell the other responders we have two for extraction under the core stairwell in the North Tower.”

Connor does as he’s told, perhaps grateful to have something to do, and Alexios pulls off his work shirt and wads it up around the rebar in Connor’s side and presses down hard. Connor bites off a shout just in time for the phone to pick up.

Alexios can hear the operator’s voice through the speaker. He’s asking Connor what the emergency is, but Connor’s in too much pain to talk. Alexios grabs the phone with a blood-wet hand and cradles it to his ear.

“My name is Alexios,” Alexios pants, and keeps the pressure on Connor’s side with his other shaking hand. “I spoke with an operator named Cosette earlier. I found another survivor. We’re buried under the core stairwell in the North Tower of the World Trade Center.”

_“Alexios?”_ The operator questions, and then his voice grows faint for a moment and suddenly the line clicks.

The woman’s voice from earlier comes on.

_“Alexios, it’s Cosette. Can you hear me?”_

“I can.” Alexios’s hand slips, and Connor groans and curses at him. “I found another survivor. A fireman, Connor Kenway.”

_“What? Connor’s with you?”_ Her voice jumps in pitch and fills with suppressed worry. _“He’s alive?”_

Alexios blinks with some surprise and glances down at his friend. “Yes.”

_“Oh.” _An explosive sigh from the other end of the line. _“Oh, thank God.”_

A suspicion builds in Alexios’s mind. “Wait. You’re not _Cosette,_ Cosette, right? As in Connor’s _wife,_ Cosette?”

A beat. _“Yes. I am. I’m his very pregnant wife, and you tell him that if he dies there I’m going to flay him alive.”_

Alexios laughs so hard it hurts and he has to pull the phone away from his ear to keep her from hearing him cough up blood. He glances wryly down at Connor.

“Your wife says if you die here she’s going to flay you alive,” Alexios chokes out, and for a moment, Connor’s wheezing laughter mixes with Alexios’s until it fills their tiny space with a horrific symphony of gurgling and coughing and the splatter of blood. When Alexios finally chokes back a groan and puts the phone back to his ear, Cosette is calling his name with intense worry in her voice. “Thank you, Cosette. We needed that laugh. This is Alexios, by the way. I was at your wedding, remember? Served with Connor in Kosovo?”

A beat. Then Cosette sighs. _“Alexios. Right. Right, I remember. You and Connor called your friendly little rivalry ‘Team Spartans versus Team Redskins’. Most hilarious off-color joke I’ve ever heard. Sorry, I’ve been a little distracted today.”_

Alexios laughs. “I can relate.”

_“I figured you could,”_ Cosette jabs back, and that’s why Alexios always liked her: she’s got a quick wit and a good sense of humor. Gallows humor, especially. She’s quiet a moment. Then, _“Okay. Is Connor’s locator intact?”_

“It is. I’ve got it sitting beneath the pipe I told you about.” Alexios glances at the chirping instrument. “Intact and being incredibly annoying.”

_“The first responders are almost to your position. They pulled another fourteen firefighters off the slab there yesterday morning.”_

“Who?” Connor gasps out. “Ritchie?”

Alexios repeats the question into the mouthpiece.

_“Yes,”_ Cosette replies. “_Richard Picciotto and thirteen others.”_

When Alexios relays the response, Connor sighs and sags back against the rubble. He’s almost grey. “Good.”

Alexios eyes his friend with concern. “Cosette, I’m hanging up. I need to try to stanch the bleeding.”

Cosette swallows audibly. _“Right. Right. Wouldn’t want him bleeding out before I can rip him a new asshole for making me go into an early labor.”_

“Yeah, real- Wait, what? For real?” Alexios’s eyebrows shoot up.

A groan crackles over the earpiece. _“For real, yeah. Tell him I’m about three hours away from my water breaking and that the contractions are getting stronger.”_

“Holy shit!” Alexios laughs, and then looks down at Connor, who is gazing up at him through half-closed eyes. “You sent her into labor!”

Connor grimaces and flips Alexios the bird. “Tell her this is no time to joke around.”

Alexios hears Cosette bite back another moan before her breathing deepens, whooshing through the receiver like the rushing of a bellows. His eyebrows shoot up and he gives Connor a wide-eyed look before handing the phone off to him.

“I don’t think she’s joking, pal,” Alexios murmurs, and Connor frowns as he puts the receiver to his ear. Alexios watches as what little color was in Connor’s cheeks vanishes as the seconds pass. “Sounds like she really is in labor.”

But Connor isn’t listening anymore. He hardly even seems to notice his wound or the pressure Alexios is putting on it. Connor’s voice is rough. “Cosette? Cosette, honey, talk to me. How far apart are the contractions?”

Alexios catches the sound of Cosette’s voice but cannot make out the words. Connor listens in silence a moment, the line of his mouth terse, and then he nods.

“Well, tell our son he’d better wait a few hours, ‘cause I am _not_ missing his birth because a bloody _building_ fell on me,” he states, and Alexios catches the sound of Cosette’s tearful laugh. Connor’s eyes are suspiciously bright. “I love you, Cosette. So much. Go to the hospital without me. I’ll meet you there. Don’t worry, I’ll be there soon. …Yeah. Promise I’ll try not to. Yeah. Love you too.”

He hangs up, then, and slumps back against the rubble while Alexios breathes too deeply over him and inhales too much of the smoke, and ends up coughing and choking as a result. Connor tugs Alexios down beside him and pushes his mask into Alexios’s hands.

“Take a breath,” Connor insists, and Alexios obliges, putting on the mask and taking a few deep breaths of oxygen before he returns it to Connor’s face. Connor’s voice is muffled when he chokes out, “Holy shit. I’m gonna be a dad.”

Alexios coughs out a laugh. “Well… at least one good thing can come out of this clusterfuck.”

Connor nods his agreement. Then his eyes roll up into his head, and he abruptly passes out. Alexios swears and puts pressure back on the wound. If only he had his kit on hand… but it’s no use wishing. His hands slip in Connor’s blood, but he doesn’t let that deter him.

It takes almost fifteen minutes before the bleeding slows, and by that time Alexios has one hand glued to Connor’s throat, babysitting his friend’s pulse while the other holds the saturated shirt tight to the Mohawk man’s side. Thankfully, Connor’s pulse is holding steady even if it’s thready and weak, and at this point, unconsciousness is probably the best thing for him. He won’t be in pain right now; the deep sleep has also slowed his heart rate enough that it’s also slowed the rate of blood loss.

_Thank God for small blessings,_ Alexios thinks, and then he bows his head and closes his eyes as his vision starts swimming again. There’s another piece of rebar on the rubbish pile to his left. He grabs it, reaches over Connor, and smacks it against the pipe near their heads.

_Claaaaannnnng._

Good. It resonates well. Alexios does it again- loses his balance and topples over onto his back-

Alexios howls. Pain explodes between his shoulder blades. His world goes white with it. When it finally dims to a red agony, he’s left gasping and moaning, and actual tears are streaking his face. He groans and starts lifting his arm to investigate- and then lets his arm fall again as his vision goes yellow once more. Alexios shifts and wetness trickles down his back beneath his t-shirt. It feels like it went deep. Very deep.

He clenches his teeth. Groans deep in his chest. He’s not going to make it much longer, now, not with this new wound he can’t reach leaking precious blood he can’t spare. He grits his teeth and forces himself onto his side. His leg is on fire, his back is on fire, he can’t breathe, and not for the first time today, a chill runs down Alexios’s spine that he hasn’t felt since Kosovo. For the first time in three years, he lies there on his back (figuratively speaking) and actually wonders if he’ll be able to make it out of this.

With a shaking hand, he reaches his piece of rebar up to the pipe and, with a grimace, he starts tapping out letters.

_Clang-clang-clang._ S.

_Claaang, claaang, claaang._ O.

_Clang-clang-clang._ S.

Pause.

_Clang-clang-clang. Claaang, claaang, claaang. Clang-clang-clang._

S.O.S. Over and over, over and over, on and on until his vision goes dim. The smoke is so thick he can hardly even see the pipe, anymore, and his thoughts are so sluggish he can hardly even remember how to make the patterns. He clangs away, half-hoping that someone, _anyone,_ will hear the discordant noise and come investigating.

“I… won’t… die… here,” he finds himself murmuring as his exhausted arm finally falls limp across Connor’s chest. Alexios’s hands brush against something small and hard, something plastic. His half-busted phone. He stares at it for a moment in the harsh white light of Connor’s mask.

He will never remember, later, how he manages to pick up the phone and get it open with one hand that’s trembling so hard he nearly drops it. He will never remember dialing that number. He will never remember the tearful voice picking up on the other end and saying “Hello? Hello?” over and over again.

He will remember her voice, though.

“…Kass,” he finally slurs, and then swallows a mouthful of blood and ash. Smoke clogs his lungs. He coughs. His voice is a barely-there rasp of air. “Kass?”

_“…Alexios?”_ Kass’s voice is faraway. God, he’s so tired. Alexios coughs again. His hand shakes so hard he loses his grip, and the phone flops down onto the tough material of Connor’s fireman’s coat. Alexios fumbles for the phone again. It takes him a couple tries to grab it and successfully put it to his ear. Kass is calling for him, and her voice is garbled and the sound is chaotic, like there are a lot of people talking loudly all at once, but Alexios closes his eyes and focuses on his sister’s voice. It takes some effort. _“Alexios! Alexios, are you there? Answer me! Alexios!”_

Alexios is quiet a second, gathering his strength. Then he licks his lips, swallows the cotton on his tongue, and rasps, “…’m here. Kass.”

_“Oh my God!”_ she gasps, and her voice gets muffled for a second. Sounds like she’s covering the mike with her hand, because she’s shouting even though the sound has been muted. _“Alexios, where are you? Are you okay? Oh, God, which hospital are you at? Where’d they take you?”_

Alexios briefly thinks about lying to her. It might be kinder, if she thinks he’s been rescued and is receiving treatment. It might spare her the pain of the reality he faces- that they both face.

“I’m…” He pauses, and then coughs. It’s a weak cough, compared to his earlier chokings, but still just as wet. “I’m… I’m… I don’t know, I…” Dead silence on the other end. Alexios’s eyes sting, suddenly. “Kass? Kass, please. Please…” He takes a sharp breath, which starts him coughing, and then suddenly he can’t stop, because the smoke is near the ground, now, and the pipe can’t ventilate it properly. Blood wells in his throat and spatters on the ground beneath his cheek, sprays across Connor’s glowing white mask beside him, drips slowly from Alexios’s nose. Fear spikes through his heart. Alexios sucks in a wet breath. His voice is shaking. “Please, Kass, please, don’t be mad at me. Don’t be mad. I’m sorry, I tried, I really did…”

_“Mad?”_ Her voice breaks, and suddenly the tears come hot and fast, and it’s water Alexios really can’t afford to lose, but he needs this. He’s sobbing, breath hitching, but he doesn’t care. Alarm spreads through her voice. _“Why would I be mad? Where are you, Alexios? Please tell me. I promise you, I’m not mad, just please, tell me where you are so I can come get you.”_

He coughs again and swallows, wrenches his voice back under control. “Don’t come here. Whatever you do, don’t you come here.”

_“Where are you?”_

Alexios’s vision is smearing and hazing. He can’t feel his fingers.

_“Alexios? Alexios!”_

“I’m… I’m sorry, Kass. I’m sorry… I can’t keep my promise to you.” He swallows. It’s getting harder to swallow, to get his thoughts under control. “Guess I… I just wanted… t’hear your voice.” He breathes out and closes his eyes. “I love you, Kass. If… If they don’t find us in time…” He coughs again. Blood splatters the ground. Alexios’s voice is rough when he says, “I’m so proud of you, Kass. B-Be… the good woman I- I know you are.”

She’s saying his name over and over. Kass is begging him not to go, not to hang up, to tell her where he is, but Alexios’s mouth and nose are full of blood and smoke, now, and the very air tastes of ash.

“…Kass?” he asks softly. She goes quiet. Alexios closes his eyes and tries to picture their parents. They’re bits and pieces, now. He can’t remember his mother’s voice, anymore. He can’t remember his father’s booming laugh. He remembers Myrrine’s smile, though, because Kassandra has that same smile. He remembers Nikolaos’s quiet strength, because he and Kassandra both share that. Alexios coughs weakly. “You… You remember the sea?”

_“What?”_

“Grandfather’s villa,” Alexios whispers. “The one in Sparta, in Lakonia. We used to wake up early… just to see the sun rise-” He breaks off into a series of spluttering coughs, and then groans involuntarily when the spasms jostle the shard in his back and the wound in his leg. His ribs hurt.

_“…and the sunlight on the water looked like a thousand diamonds?”_ Kassandra is crying, now, but though he can hear the tears in her voice, she is not sobbing. Kass has always been a quiet crier, like that.

“…Yeah.” The world is growing hazy. Alexios swallows. “I can’t… I can’t see it, Kass. I c-can’t see anything, anymore.”

_“That’s all right, Alexios. It’s okay. When you get back, I don’t care if we have to quit the apartment and do odd jobs on the road, I’ll take you back there, I promise. Just stay with me, okay? Stay with me. Stay with me.”_

His arm is getting tired. With a weary sigh, Alexios settles the phone on his cheek and then lets his hand slip away. The plastic is warm against his sweaty skin.

“Will you… Will you tell me of it, Kass?” he asks. “What’ll it be like?”

Kassandra sniffles. _“We’ll go back to the villa. You know it’s still ours. We’ll have to fix it up, but you’re big and strong, and we’ll have Kleio and Brasidas there to help, too. We’ll repaint the walls white and blue, just as they should be. We’ll fix the leak in the roof. When it gets hot out, we’ll all sleep on the rooftop together, and the sunrise will wake us in the morning. It’ll glitter off the bay, so much bluer than the Hudson is, and the light will make the snows on Mount Taygetos glow like pure gold. Can you smell the olives and the hyacinths? Can you smell the sweet peas, Alexios? Can you imagine it?”_

He can. He just doesn’t have the energy to say it.

_“…Alexios?”_

Kass’s voice is… distant.

_“Alexios…?”_

The light vanishes.

_“Alexios!”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this story! If you've enjoyed Zero Hour so far, I would really appreciate it if you would leave a comment and let me know how I'm doing. Thank you so much!
> 
> **Author's Notes:**  
And so we have a foretaste of the chaos to come. I'm not going to lie: the next few chapters are going to be really, really tough to write, but I swear this story isn't even halfway over, yet. Just, you know, things are going to get worse- a lot worse- before they get better.
> 
> Just stay with me.
> 
> Cosette is another OC of mine. I introduced her in my other Assassin's Creed fic, [Sum of Memories](https://archiveofourown.org/works/809503/chapters/1528047). She's Connor's love interest there, too. And yes, Connor did just get impaled in the exact same place he did in the game. I'm wicked like that. And now we know how modern!Alexios got all his scars. I figure shrapnel is as good a source as any.
> 
> About the "Team Spartans vs. Team Redskins" comment: In my headcanon, Connor and Alexios are completely irreverent and like to poke fun at each other in any way they can. Nothing is sacred, especially when humor is involved. Thing is, they've been through fire together. Each knows the other means no harm, so in this case, it's a big joke to them.
> 
> For example:  
Connor: *raises eyebrow at Alexios* "I could have said you're on 'Team I-Shag-Everything-in-Sight-That-Has-Two-Legs-and-Sometimes-Goats-Too', but that's too much of a mouthful and I'm feeling lazy, so Team Spartans it is."  
Alexios: *sputters indignantly for a second, then pauses* "Well, I guess you have a point, there. Better 'Team Redskins' than naming yours 'Team Virgin', at any rate."  
And so the rivalry was born...
> 
> Richard Picciotto is one of fourteen real firefighters who survived the collapse of the North Tower because they were below Floor 6 in the tower's core stairwell when the building went down.


	5. Armageddon: Alexios and Kassandra, 11 Sep. 2001

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kassandra handles some personal issues and deals with the Kosmos Kult's growing interest in her. Alexios and Kleio contemplate the bright future before them.
> 
> And then the world comes crashing down around their ears.
> 
> Warning: Contains adult situations and graphic descriptions of real events.

* * *

“No no, my lord! Please do not make me go! Let me stay here! You cannot bring them back, and you will not return here if you try. Hurry, we must escape with these men here! We have a chance to save our lives!”  
-Homer, _The Odyssey_

* * *

September 11 is a Tuesday. Tuesdays are Alexios’s absolute favorite day of the week, he decides as Kleio comes undone beneath the careful ministrations of his mouth and tongue and fingers. She’s gasping and clutching at his hair and her thighs are squeezing his head so hard it almost hurts. God, but she’s beautiful like this. It makes him regret that he’ll have to be at work in just under two hours or so; he’d like nothing better than to keep her in bed all day long, come out only to eat and piss and then go back to making love to her again and again. She finally goes slack beneath him, and then she’s tugging at his hair, pulling him up and over her and sealing her mouth over his.

Alexios moans quietly and guides himself inside her.

She’s a crucible of life and heat around him, still warm and slick with her pleasure, and it doesn’t take him long at all before he’s riding the wave of ecstasy to its final conclusion. After, he collapses onto his elbows and rests his cheek upon her breast, and drowsily considers how lucky he is to have her to wake up to.

Kleio breathes a laugh and cards her fingers through his hair. “I think I love morning sex the most.”

He grins and nips a mark into the skin just below her collarbone. She giggles. “Why’s that?”

Kleio pulls him down beside her. “I love coming awake to the feel of your hands and mouth on me, your body against mine. There’s something so comforting about the way you hold me so gently, and when you make love to me in that half-awake state… Coming together with you like that feels almost…” She exhales. “I don’t know. Transcendent.”

Something inside him glows and preens with pride at the obvious satisfaction that’s curling her lips. Alexios wraps her in his arms and pulls her to him just for the pleasure of having her body against his. She’s soft in all the places he isn’t; her skin is unmarred and fair where his is marked with dozens of shrapnel scars, and there’s a noticeable tan to his skin where it’s pressed against hers. He especially loves the curve of her hip and the dip of her waist, the arch at the small of her back and the hollows where her thighs join her torso. Kleio’s hazel eyes are twinkling at him. Her lips curve in a giddy smile.

“Come on,” he murmurs, and kisses her softly. “Time to go to work, then, hm?”

She hums and then inhales deeply for a second, as though she, too, is debating the merits of staying in bed all day versus getting up and battling traffic and everything else. Then she drops a kiss onto his lips and rolls out of bed with a soft groan and a stretch. He admires the curve of her backside and the hourglass of her waist for a second before he gets up and joins her.

It’s as he rises that he realizes that he’s not wearing a condom.

Alexios freezes. He stares down at himself, takes in the sticky dampness coating him, and glances back at the messy bed. The covers are still thrown back, but there is no used condom to be seen. His stomach turns to ice. Alexios gulps.

“Kleio?” he asks softly. She hums in question. “I, uh… I think we forgot the condom.”

Silence. Then she joins him, stares at the bed a moment, and then glances down at him, down into the empty wastebasket beside the bed, and lets out a breath.

“Well,” she murmurs, and plants her hands on her hips. There’s a wry quirk to her brows and lips. “At least we’re getting married. Might just have to tie the knot a little sooner than we anticipated.”

He stares at her, surprised that she’s taking this so well, but then he realizes he shouldn’t be surprised at all. Kleio has always been the type of person who rolls with the punches, and she’s always loved kids. That they may have just conceived their first child and it doesn’t faze her at all? That’s just like her.

“I’m not going to worry about it too much,” she murmurs, and turns away and continues dressing. “The emergency contraception kits are all prescription, and there are so many side-effects that it’s not really worth it, anyway.” She pauses in the middle of pulling her hair into a ponytail, and takes a breath. “And maybe… Even if we’re not ready for a baby, yet, I can’t comprehend aborting it. Adoption, maybe, but… I mean… If we conceive, it’ll be yours and mine. I’m sure Brasidas would adore a niece or nephew, and Kass would, too.”

Alexios goes to her and slips his arms around her waist. He’s not dressed, yet, and her clean scrubs are soft against his naked skin.

“I wouldn’t ask you to abort it, or to put it up for adoption,” he murmurs, and slides his hands down to cover her lower belly. “We would make it work, no matter what.” They’re quiet a moment, and a thrill runs through Alexios. They only just did it, only just chanced it, and there’s no way to know whether or not they’ve conceived, but just the idea that they might one day be parents… It simultaneously terrifies him and excites him, and he’s not sure how to feel about that. He exhales shakily and leans down and presses his lips to the side of Kleio’s neck. She tilts her head, and when she looks at him over her shoulder, she’s smiling softly. Alexios kisses her. “God, I love you, woman.”

“I love you, too,” she replies, and then reaches back and squeezes his bottom. “Now, go get dressed before we’re late.”

Alexios nips her in the crook of her neck, and then he leaves her while she giggles, and starts tugging on his uniform for the day.

“I’m going to have to do some laundry, tonight,” he announces to Kleio while he pulls on a t-shirt and then tugs his white uniform shirt over it. “Want to join me?”

“What, and sit in a dirty laundromat for two hours on a Tuesday night?” She laughs at the raised eyebrow he sends her. “As long as you don’t mind me bringing my homework, sure. I might get pregnant from this morning, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to throw away my plans for the future just like that.”

“Good,” he growls, and abruptly pulls her to him and seals his mouth over hers. She whimpers a bit when he plants his hands on her ass and grinds his hips against hers. “I love a woman with ambition.”

Kleio bites his lower lip in retaliation. Alexios pulls away with a husky chuckle.

“We’re going to be late,” she reminds him. Alexios is still grinning when he grabs his bag for the day and follows her out into the hall.

Kass is still in bed, it seems: the kitchen is deserted, and the television is dark. Kassandra’s backpack and shoes are still sitting by the door. As Kleio quickly fixes a pan of scrambled eggs for them to take on the road, Alexios starts the coffee brewing and preps a pair of travel mugs with sweetener- Splenda for him, sugar for Kleio- and a splash of milk each, and then he pads back down the hall on silent feet and knocks softly on his sister’s bedroom door.

No response.

Alexios frowns and tries the knob. It’s unlocked, so he eases the door open just a crack and peers inside. Kassandra is still asleep in her bed, but he can see a small stack of folded paper on her desk against the far wall. He slips inside and closes the door behind him. There’s just enough light easing through the curtains for him to see by, so Alexios tiptoes across the room to the desk and examines the papers.

_Mr. Harman,_ reads the first one. Kassandra’s math teacher, Alexios recalls. The next one reads, _Mr. Herodotos,_ who is her history teacher, and the third is addressed to her biology teacher, Mr. Bell. The remaining four are addressed to the rest of her teachers, and a warm rush of pride fills Alexios’s chest. He glances over at Kassandra, sprawled face-down on her bed like some kind of crazy starfish with her head turned away from him, and smiles.

She’s a good kid, she really is.

Kass looks so peaceful, he’s reluctant to disturb her. Her spiral-bound notebook is still lying open on the desk with her pencil beside it where she was writing last night. Alexios picks up the pencil and puts it to the paper.

_Κασσανδρα._ He writes her name in Greek, just as he always has, and then switches to English for her sake. Kass has spoken English longer than she ever spoke Greek, and even though she can understand it when it’s spoken around her, she can’t read it past her name, and speaking it is mostly beyond her scope of interest.

_You’re still sleeping, and I don’t want to wake you, so please forgive my handwriting. I know it’s atrocious; you’ve said so many times._

_I know we’ve been on the rocks, lately, and I would guess that you’re still mad at me. I’d be mad at me, too. I haven’t made much time for you, and for that, I apologize. I’m sorry that I yelled at you last night, and that I threw that bowl. If I frightened you, I apologize for that, as well. It seems so often like I’m failing you. Most of the time, I can’t even find the words to say to you._

_There’s so much we need to talk about, so much that I have to say, and that I wish you would say to me. You and I need to have a heart-to-heart. It doesn’t have to be a bad one, or a strained one. I really do want to know what you’re thinking and feeling. I might not always know how to ask, but I love it when you talk to me. I’m free on Friday and Saturday. How would you feel about going to the Wild Bird Sanctuary and visiting Ikaros? Evie says he’s been looking pretty depressed lately. She thinks he misses us. She says he hasn’t even been preening Senu, and you know how lovey-dovey those two are._

_I love you, Kassandra, and I’m very proud of you. Thank you for taking my advice. I hope I’ll see you tonight after work._

_Have a good day at school, αδελφή._

_Αλεξιος._

He puts down the pencil and leaves the notebook on the desk beside her letters to her teachers, and hopes to God that she remembers to bring them with her today. She needs to keep her grades up. It would be better if she stopped hanging around Diona and Pausanias, but that’s a lot to ask at the moment.

Alexios pauses long enough to feather a touch over the crown of Kassandra’s dark hair.

“I love you, Kass,” he whispers, “and you have no idea how proud I am of you. Mater and Pater would be proud of you, too. I just…” He opens his mouth to say something else, but then his words fail him, and he sighs softly and runs his fingers over her hair one more time. “I just wish I knew what you’re going through so I could help you handle it. Be safe today, Kass. I’ll see you soon.”

He leaves her, then, and slips out of her room as quietly as he entered, closes the door behind himself, and walks back down the hallway. He pauses when he catches the sound of a soft sob from the room behind him, but when he hears her crying, something clenches in his chest, and he realizes that she doesn’t want him hearing her.

He almost goes back to comfort her. Then he sighs softly and keeps walking.

Kleio is waiting for him by the door when he emerges from the hallway. She has her hands full, so he picks up his duffel and takes one of the scrambled-egg burritos from her as well as one of the travel mugs, and he lets her out and locks the door behind them both.

The drive to work this morning is quiet, and Alexios lets himself get lost in his thoughts while Kleio sits beside him with one hand laced in his and her other resting on her lower belly.

They’re nearly to the World Trade Centers when she squeezes his hand and says, “Alexios?”

He blinks and glances over at her. “Kleio?”

“You’re going to make a great father, you know.” She glances at him sidelong, and lifts an eyebrow at him. “You’re going to be a wonderful father.”

His throat goes tight and he glances away before she can see the impact that the statement has on him. She’s so certain, so assured. Her faith in him is humbling.

“You think so?” he asks. He catches her nod from the corner of his eye.

“I know so. You’re wonderful with Kassandra- even when you have to be a hard-ass,” she teases, and squeezes his hand. “That, and you really care about her future and what she’s doing with her life. You’re going to be a great dad.”

He lifts her hand to his lips and presses a kiss to her knuckles. His throat is so tight he can’t reply right away. She’s watching him, her gaze knowing.

It’s after he parks the car and shuts off the engine that he turns to her, leans over the console, cups her jaw in his hand, and pulls her to him for a deep, probing kiss.

When he pulls away again, she’s watching him from beneath half-lidded eyes, lips parted, breath quick. If it weren’t 7:45 in the morning, he’d pull her right over the console and take her against the steering wheel, or maybe in the back seat. As it is, it’s his turn to open up the building today, so he reluctantly lets her go.

“How soon would we be able to tell?” he asks softly, and squeezes her hand. She takes a breath.

“I’m not entirely sure,” she admits. “I’ve seen tests that advertise that they can tell you yes or no after two weeks. I know it can take up to three days for sperm to fertilize an egg and for it to implant into the uterine wall, and it could be a week or two after that, but the tests are notoriously unreliable until about a month or so in, and by then I’d have missed a period, so…”

Alexios nods, pondering the answer through the cloud of medical jargon. “Guess it’s going to be a long few weeks.”

“If you’re anxious about it, yeah,” she admits, and then she flashes him a smile that sets her eyes alight with excitement and steals his breath away. “Or we could just accept that I’m already pregnant, decide that we’re going to be awesome parents, and get excited about it instead of dreading it.”

He laughs, leans in, and kisses her soundly. “I love you, woman.”

“I love you, too,” she returns, and then pats his cheek. “Come on. Let’s go open up shop, and I’ll hang out with you until I have to catch my train at nine.”

They climb out of the car together, and Alexios teases her, “You’re being very calm about this. Were you a hippie in a past life, or something?”

Kleio laughs. “A basket-weaver, for sure. Come on, let’s go before you’re late.”

They walk inside hand-in-hand, and Kleio waits in the Hub off the west-side lobby for Brasidas’s arrival while Alexios goes around and opens up the building for the day. The first arrivals of the day begin flooding through the lobbies and head up the elevators and stairwells. When he finally returns and relieves old Barnabas from night duty, Barnabas grins at the both of them and offers his congratulations on their engagement before he departs. Brasidas joins them at about eight-thirty on account of the traffic, and they spend the next ten minutes going over the day’s assignments. The building is filling up. With the normal volume of day workers heading up in addition to a few corporate meetings going on, Alexios estimates there must be over a thousand people going up above the ninety-third floor alone. If he weren’t so used to the population density of New York City, the sheer volume of the influx of people would alarm him. As it is, he takes in the traffic with a casual eye, seeking disturbances without actively searching for them.

Eventually, Kleio finishes her conversation with Brasidas and straightens up from where she was slouching against the edge of the desk.

“Well, I’ve gotta go,” she murmurs, glancing regretfully at her watch. “It’s eight-forty-four, and if I’m gonna get through the turnstiles and catch my train on time, I have to leave now.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Brasidas offers. Kleio accepts with a smile, and bends down and kisses Alexios with a tenderness he wasn’t expecting.

“I’ll see you tonight,” she promises, and Alexios caresses her cheek, heart filled with peace for the first time in a long time.

“See you then,” he replies, and then she and Brasidas turn and depart. Alexios watches them go, chews on his lips for a moment, turns back to the monitors-

-and an explosion rocks the building.

The cameras on floors 93-99 turn to static and then go dark. Alexios’s heart jolts into his throat, carrying his stomach with it- and then the roar fills his ears. He spins around, facing the open doorway, and catches sight of Brasidas and Kleio picking themselves up in the lobby. They’re almost to the doors, half-crouched behind a desk.

“_Get down!”_ Alexios screams, and then flames shoot out of the elevator banks.

Brasidas and Kleio vanish into the wall of heat. The blast throws Alexios back against the monitor bank. The door slams shut. He drops. His head cracks against the desk and stars explode before his eyes, and a strange ringing fills his ears. For a second, he lies there, dazed, blood dripping down his nose and cheek from where the collision with the desk split his face open, and then the ringing clears a little and he blinks the haze from his eyes- only to realize that it’s not a haze at all. Thick, oily black smoke is pouring into the room from under the door. Alexios groans and turns himself with a grimace. The cameras in the lobby must’ve gotten taken out by the blast, because the corresponding screens are dark. Alexios glances to his left and slaps his hand down on the emergency alarm button.

A second later, he has the landline against his ear- only to find that it’s dead. There’s no busy signal, no dial tone, no nothing, just dead silence. The lines are dead. They’re cut off from the outside world-

Memory sparks, and Alexios fumbles in his pocket for his new phone. He dials 9-1-1 with shaking fingers, but the signal is strong despite the chaos outside the room, and within the space of a second, an operator picks up the line.

_“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”_

“I’m at One World Trade Center,” he gasps, staring at the smoke flooding into the room with near-unseeing eyes. “The security hub in the west lobby. I think- something’s happened. There’s been an explosion.”

Silence on the other end. Alexios’s heart is lodged somewhere in the base of his throat and doing its damnedest to pound itself straight out of his esophagus, and for a second, he’s worried he lost her.

_“Oh my God.”_

His palms are sweating. “What? What is it?”

_“I- Sir, I- A plane just hit the top of the North Tower.”_ His mouth goes dry at the words. _“Emergency teams are scrambling. They’ll be there, soon. Just- Just hold on.”_

He eyes the smoke collecting at the ceiling. “Not an option. The room’s filling with smoke. I stay here much longer, I’ll suffocate.”

_“Sir, just-”_

“Just get any emergency responders here that you can, as soon as possible.” Alexios’s gaze is fixed on the remaining screens. Some of them are still functioning where his hitting them didn’t damage them, and the footage he sees resembles something out of a nuclear winter, or a warzone. It’s Hell. “This is going to be bad. Really bad.”

He pauses. “Oh, shit- Kleio and Brasidas!”

Alexios grits his teeth, claps his phone closed and slips it into his pocket, and then taps the doorknob with the tips of his fingers. It’s cool, so there isn’t fire right on the other side of the door. Alexios yanks his work shirt off and tears off a strip of it, and wraps that around his nose and mouth. The rest of it, he tucks into the waistband of his khaki dungarees, just in case he needs it later.

Then he reaches out and cautiously opens the door.

He was right- there isn’t any fire directly outside, but the entire lobby looks like a bomb just went off in it. Everything is scorched and coated in a thick layer of yellow dust and grey ash. Alexios scrambles towards where he last saw Brasidas and Kleio. He finds them there behind the desk; they’re pinned against the wall where the blast threw them, and the heavy desk has them trapped. The wood is burning; Kleio’s eyes are closed and she isn’t responding to Brasidas’s groans of pain or his calls of her name.

“Brasidas!” Alexios gasps, bracing himself against the wall over them and leaning over the desk. Brasidas turns huge, blue-grey eyes up to him, and for a second, they’re both back in Kosovo with snow and ash falling all around them. Alexios catches the dark sheen of blood spreading across the floor beneath them. “Brasidas, how are you hurt?”

“I can’t tell if my leg’s broken or not,” Brasidas hisses as Alexios shoves his hands under the cool edge of the desk, crouches, and pushes up hard with his legs. “Kleio- Kleio, come on, we’ve got to move!”

“Damn, it’s heavy!” Alexios grits out, but though Brasidas is moving, Kleio is unresponsive. “She’s unconscious. Grab her and move!”

Brasidas swears and wraps his arm around Kleio’s chest, and starts dragging them both out from under the desk. Kleio’s head lolls lifelessly against her brother’s shoulder, and Alexios’s grip on the desk falters with alarm. Is her neck broken? Is she even still alive?

Kleio’s right leg is definitely broken at mid-thigh. It lays at an angle that’s at odds with the rest of her, and there’s a laceration that has bisected the meat of her thigh straight through the hamstring muscle, so deep that Alexios can make out the white glint of bone beneath. Blood is gushing from the wound, but it’s not the bright red of an arterial spray. That’s a relief. Brasidas pulls his sister the rest of the way out from beneath the desk, and Alexios lets the furniture drop back into place before he drops to his knees beside his fiancée and her brother.

“No arterial spray,” Alexios murmurs, and pulls Kleio into his arms and lays her out flat so that Brasidas can collapse to the floor with a groan. Alexios probes the vertebrae of Kleio’s neck- nothing out of place- and then checks for her pulse before pulling open her eyelids and checking her pupils. No concussion. Most likely she was just knocked senseless. Alexios swears softly and fumbles for the remains of his shirt, still tucked into his waistband. He tosses it over Kleio’s belly and then, with a fury that surprises him, he reaches up and wrenches off one of the legs of the desk. The wooden rod comes free with a crunch. Alexios wastes no time tying the shirt around Kleio’s leg above her wound, and then he shoves the desk leg underneath the tied-off cloth and begins twisting.

He twists the desk leg like turning a windlass, winches the bandage down until it looks painfully tight and is most certainly cutting off any and all circulation below Kleio’s mid-thigh, and then he rips her scrubs up the side seam to her knee and uses the pieces to tie the bar in place. He’s glad she’s unconscious. She’d be screaming if she were awake, and Alexios isn’t sure he could take that, right now.

Kleio starts coming around right as Alexios finishes tying up her leg. She groans and reaches up and throws a hand over her eyes- and then hisses and grimaces as a burn on the back of her wrist cracks and begins oozing blood.

“What-?” she gasps, and Alexios hushes her and takes her hand gently in his. He glances at Brasidas. His friend’s leg is twisted much like Kleio’s is, and there’s a gash on the outside of the older man’s thigh that’s oozing blood, but it’s not as deep or as worrying as Kleio’s is, so Alexios takes a second to push down on Kleio’s shoulder and prevent her from moving. Kleio moans softly. “Alexios?”

“Yes,” he replies shortly. Blue and red lights flash through the front windows. “Come on. You first, and then I’ll come back for you, Brasidas.”

“Go,” Brasidas grunts, and he’s applying pressure to his thigh even as Alexios scoops Kleio into his arms and picks his way over broken glass and other debris and hurries down the front steps to where the paramedics are rushing to the building.

In every direction, civilians are running away from the building. People are screaming, and when Alexios glances over to his right, he spots a few corpses. They’ve been partially dismembered. He gulps and turns his attention to the paramedics that come up to him.

“She’s got a broken femur, possible concussion, second-degree burns on her wrist,” Alexios informs them. “I’ve checked her neck already. Nothing’s broken there.” He lays Kleio down on the board they set before him, and one of them immediately begins taking her blood pressure and checking her neck and eyes once more.

“Good call with the tourniquet,” the male paramedic comments, and he clips a brace around Kleio’s neck and they start strapping her to the board. “Are you injured, sir?”

“Just this,” Alexios replies, gesturing to his sliced-up face. He glances down and finds that Kleio is watching him. Her eyelids are drooping and her face is a little swollen. Alexios bends over her and presses his lips to hers. “You’re going to be okay, okay? You’re gonna be fine. I’m going back in for Brasidas, and then I’m going to help evacuate people.”

Kleio squeezes her eyes shut and then looks up at him again. “Alexios-”

He kisses her again. If it’s at all desperate, neither of them say so.

He pulls back. “I’ll see you at the hospital when this is all over.” He glances up to the paramedics. “This is my fiancée I’m entrusting to your care. Make sure she’s treated well?”

The man nods. “We will, sir. You said you have more injured?”

“Yes. Her brother was escorting her out when they got pinned by a desk in the blast. His leg is also broken, but he’s conscious.” Alexios squeezes Kleio’s hand and strokes her hair back from her eyes. She’s covered in dust and ash. “You’re going to be fine, babe.” He looks up at the paramedics. “Get her out of here. I’ll meet you back here in five minutes with her brother.”

The man and woman nod, and as one, they each take a side of the bier and hoist Kleio between them. Alexios doesn’t wait after that. He’s already running back inside. People are already flooding from the core stairwell and beginning to stampede toward the exits when Alexios reaches Brasidas’s side.

“What a day,” Brasidas is murmuring over and over again when Alexios kneels by him and pulls the older man’s arm across his shoulders. “What a goddamn day.”

“What a day,” Alexios agrees, and then he pulls his friend upright and Brasidas howls an epithet that draws several startled glances their way. Alexios hauls Brasidas out the front window the way he took Kleio, and there are more paramedics arriving at the scene by the minute, but given the scale of this disaster…

_They’re not prepared,_ he realizes with growing horror constricting his throat. _There’s no way they could have been prepared for this. There are over five-thousand people in this building. There’s no way they’re going to be able to help everyone._

He secures his grip on Brasidas’s waist and carries him to safety. After he’s safe, Alexios straightens and turns to run back into the building, but Brasidas grabs him by the wrist. Alexios turns his gaze to his friend. Brasidas is grinding his teeth.

“Where are you going?” Brasidas demands.

Alexios blinks slowly at him. Around them, ash is beginning to fall like snow, and music is still playing over the outdoor loudspeakers. It grates on Alexios’s nerves.

“I have to go back in and help,” he answers. Where else would he go?

“And risk you getting stuck or hurt?” Brasidas grits out, and then he falls back against the ground with a gasp as the paramedics tending him cinch a bandage over the cut on his thigh. “No way. No way. Kleio would kill both of us.”

“Alkibiades, Kyra, Thaletas, and Sokrates are still inside.” Alexios presses his hand to his friend’s, and something warm wells up in Alexios’s chest. “She’ll understand, Brass. I’ll take the flak for that later. You go and get patched up, and I’ll meet you at the hospital tonight.”

With that, Alexios lets Brasidas go and dashes back inside, ignoring Brasidas’s shouts behind him.

* * *

Nine a.m. Kassandra’s first hour today is a free period, so she’s used the extra time to sleep in and avoid some of the chaos that is the New York City Morning Commute™. She’ll have to leave soon, of course, but for right now, she takes her time pouring a bowl of cereal and running a comb through her damp hair. Alexios’s note is sitting on the table. She’s still not entirely sure what to make of it. Alexios, apologizing to her? Admitting that he’s not sure what to say, most of the time? And why would he feel like he’s failing her? Kass doesn’t know why he would think he’s failing her. She knows he does his best.

More than that… He’s proud of her. He wants her to talk to him. He wants to know what she’s thinking and feeling, but most of all… Most of all, he’s proud of her, and he loves her.

After their fight last night, Kass isn’t entirely sure what to think. Her thoughts are twisting around on themselves like Medusa’s snakes, like an ouroboros eating its own tail, and she can’t seem to make heads or tails of what she feels about the words he wrote.

She knows he loves her. She always has. But him, proud of her?

Kassandra blinks hard against the sudden dampness in her eyes, takes a deep breath, and swallows.

_Knock-knock-knock._

She frowns, and goes and peers through the peephole. Diona and Pausanias are standing out in the hall, and the tattoos on their necks are deep black against the olive hue of their skin. Kassandra swallows, glances back at the note on the table, and then scowls to herself. Why should she let her brother tell her who she can and can’t hang out with? She’s an adult- or as good as one- and she can make her own damn decisions.

Kassandra unlocks the door and pulls it open. Pausanias wiggles his fingers at her, and Diona blows a cloud of pot smoke in Kassandra’s face.

“Kept us waiting long enough,” Diona scoffs, and steps forward. “You gonna let us in, or not?”

Kassandra wrinkles her nose at the skunk-like stench of the marijuana and sets her weight across the door. She’s nowhere near as tall or broad as Alexios, and certainly not as physically intimidating, but Kass isn’t a small girl, and Diona is a petite girl of only five-four and maybe a hundred pounds. Kass also knows a thing or two about throwing her weight around. She’s learned well from her brother over the years.

“Not with that joint, I’m not,” Kass scoffs, and crosses her arms over her chest. “Alexios already doesn’t like you, and if he smells weed in our house, he’s going to throw _another_ hissy fit. I don’t want that drama, Diona, not today.”

“Really? _Really?_” Diona snorts, and then draws another lungful of the foul-smelling smoke and blows it purposefully into Kassandra’s face. Kass scowls. “You’re gonna let Big Brother dictate your life to you, hmm? Where’s the Kass who helped us graffiti the subway station the night before last?”

“I have to be at school in an hour, Diona. I suggest you do what you came for and leave so I can catch my train.”

Diona pulls a face. For a second, it looks like she’s going to say something catty enough that it’ll set Kassandra off, but then Pausanias steps between them and holds up a cheap cell phone toward Kassandra. She stares blankly at it for a second. Then she meets her cousin’s gaze.

“What’s this?” she demands. He rolls his eyes and thrusts it at her.

“Nyx wants to talk to you,” he replies. Kassandra does not take the phone.

“Why?” She glares at him. “She wanna make me one of her flunkies, too?”

“I don’t know, alright?” he whines, and finally takes her hand in his and slaps the burner into her palm before stepping back. “We’re just the fucking messengers, Kassandra.” He says her name wrong. Kuh-ssanne-druh, all Americanized and not at all how it’s supposed to sound, not like Alexios and Kleio and Brasidas say it.

He says her name wrong.

Kassandra’s hand clenches around the phone. She doesn’t throw it back at him- doing that would be tantamount to a challenge to the entire gang- but she does meet first Pausanias’s gaze, and then Diona’s, and she glares at both of them.

“Get out,” she hisses, and then turns that glare to Diona. “Snuff your joint and leave, right now, before I call the cops on you.”

Diona raises her eyebrows and bats her eyelashes at Kassandra before the blonde girl takes a drag from her joint. Diona turns away, and Pausanias follows suit.

“Gonna be hard to do that,” Diona taunts, “given that they’re all down at the World Trade Centers, but fine, we’ll leave. Good luck getting through to emergency services.”

Confusion knifes through Kassandra’s brain, but she doesn’t show it. She stands in the doorway and watches until they reach the landing and then turn and make their way down the second flight of stairs and vanish from sight. Only then does Kass step back into the house, calmly close and lock the door, and then she rushes over to the TV and thumbs the ‘on’ button. It comes to life with a buzz and a hum as the tubes power up, and for a second, the color comes in green and red before everything heats up right. She’s already changing the channels, flipping rapid-fire past sports, home-improvement, daytime sales, cartoons, and finally flips on CNN-

Kassandra’s knees give out beneath her and she sinks onto the couch with horror.

Smoke is pouring out of one of the towers of the World Trade Center.

_“Looks like six or seven floors got taken out-”_

And then the unmistakable shape of an airplane swoops across the screen, dodges behind the tower that’s already on fire, and an explosion blows out into the air behind it. It’s a massive fireball. Black smoke belches from both towers, and flames are falling through the air even while she watches.

_“The whole building just exploded, the whole top part…”_ The commentator’s voice is high-pitched and his words are coming rapid-fire with horrified excitement. The view switches again, and shows a clear view of the gaping hole in the side of one of the buildings. Kassandra can’t tell which one it is. At this point, it doesn’t matter. Both of the Twin Towers are on fire, and there’s no mistake about it: This is an attack. One plane crash could have been a tragic accident, a horrifying coincidence, but two? Two is deliberate. Two is premeditated.

The United States of America has been attacked. Her history lessons flash through her head. Who could have done such a thing? The Russians? Probably not. The Iranians? The Serbians? The Taliban? Al-Qaeda?

Was Alexios above the impact zones? Was he on one of the levels that was hit?

_“This all began at about eight-forty-eight this morning…”_

Eight forty-eight. Alexios would’ve been in the Hub by then, right? If he and Kleio were there together, they would’ve been hanging out in the Hub with Brasidas, and Kleio would’ve been leaving to catch her train by then. Maybe Kleio got out in time?

Kassandra reaches up and clutches at the rosary she wears under her clothes- a jet rosary that Alexios gave her for her fourteenth birthday, one he jokingly said would ward off evils spirits- and for the first time in a while, she prays as hard as she can.

_Please, God, please, let them be safe. Let them be safe. Please, Jesus, Mary, please let them be safe…_

Memory sparks. Kassandra dashes into her room and picks up her cell phone. She scrolls down the contacts list and hits the dial button over the one that reads ‘Adorable Asshole Brother’.

It rings… and rings… and rings… and then goes to his voicemail. Kass curses and tries again. Still nothing.

She grabs her backpack and keys, locks up the apartment behind her, and runs all the way to the subway station.

* * *

Alexios pauses at the landing of the sixtieth floor and takes a second to catch his breath. His watch reads _09:53_ on his wrist. Across from him, Sokrates and Alkibiades are trying to figure out where Kyra and Thaletas were before the explosion. Alexios himself has lost track of how many rooms he’s cleared and how many people he’s sent down the stairs.

“I’m telling you, they were gonna go for a quickie in the broom closet on sixty-seven,” Sokrates insists.

Alkibiades opens his mouth to retort, but Alexios has had enough.

“Enough!” he barks, and points to the staircase. “Get out right now and get your asses away from the building.” Something groans far overhead. Alexios, Alkibiades, and Sokrates all stare up at the ceiling for a heartbeat, and then Alexios shakes himself, grabs his friends by the arms, and propels them toward the stairs. “Go, go, go!”

The two men take the stairs two at a time, but they go up instead of down, and Alexios grits his teeth and hauls his bandana more securely over his nose and mouth. The dust is so thick he can barely see through it; everything is coated in a thick layer of yellow-grey.

_I swear, if I get asbestos-related cancer from this, I’m going to kill somebody._

He glances into a room- and freezes.

Flames are dripping from the ceiling. Bodies- both dismembered and whole- litter the area, and beyond the bank of windows-

“Oh, my God,” he breathes. Another shadow blows past the window, then another, there and gone in an instant, flashes of something human-shaped that flicker through the sky and then hurtle toward the ground far below. Alexios, Alkibiades, and Sokrates all pick their way through the debris toward the windows and look down through them.

_Pop. Pop-pop. Pop. Pop-pop-p-pop._

Those are humans. Those are people, falling to the ground from seventy, eighty, ninety, a hundred stories up. Another body flies past them, and his lungs freeze in his chest while Alexios tracks its progress toward the unforgiving ground far below.

_Smack._ The three of them flinch in unison, and suddenly Alkibiades is crying, softly, crying and crossing himself. Sokrates bows his head and sets a hand on their friend’s shoulder.

“O God of spirits and of all flesh,” Sokrates murmurs, “among the spirits of the righteous perfected in faith, give rest, O Savior, to the souls of Your servants, keeping them in the blessed life which is from You, O Loving One.” His voice breaks. He clears his throat, and when he speaks again, there’s a tremor there that Alexios has never heard before. Alexios’s hands shake. “In Your place of rest, O Lord, where all Your Saints repose, give rest also to the souls of Your servants, for You alone are immortal.”

Alkibiades covers his eyes with a hand and bows his head. “Have mercy upon us, O God, according to Your great mercy. We pray to You, hear us and have mercy. We pray for the repose of the souls of the departed servants of God, these fallen, and for the forgiveness of all their sins, both voluntary and involuntary.”

He trails off into sobs again, and unable to speak, he turns to Sokrates when the other man tugs him in toward his chest.

Alexios swallows. His throat is tight.

“May the Lord God grant their souls rest where the righteous repose,” he rasps. “For the mercies of God, the kingdom of heaven, and the forgiveness of their sins, let us ask from Christ our immortal King and God.” He pauses. Remembers where they are and what is happening. Gulps down the fear that is turning his insides to ice.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” he finishes. “Amen.”

Alexios traces the sign of the cross against the glass just as another body falls past them. Alkibiades makes a strangled sound in the back of his throat, and Sokrates pulls him away from the windows. Alexios stands there a moment longer, watches the people falling to their deaths- listens to the pulverizing _slam_ of flesh and bone hitting concrete below- and then he wrenches himself away and gulps back the bile that’s rising in his gullet.

There’s a woman trapped beneath one of the desks. He goes over and checks her- she’s still breathing- and then he calls Alkibiades and Sokrates back over to him. Together, the three of them lift the desk from her waist and pull her free. She moans softly, and as Alexios gets a good look at her face, he recognizes her.

“Maria?” he asks. Blue eyes flutter open. Maria Thorpe, wife of Altaïr ibn la-Ahad, squints up at him and then groans and presses a hand to her head. “Maria, can you hear me?”

She grimaces.

“Yes, yes, I can.” Maria’s accent is posh, cultured. Very British. “Is that you, Alexios? What happened?”

Alexios takes a second and probes at her neck- no broken bones, no strange protrusions- and then he triages her situation. Maria has a couple fractured ribs, but they aren’t broken, and aside from some pain around her legs, she’s unharmed. When she looks up at him, however, Alexios finds that her pupils are not dilating correctly.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” he asks. Maria squints up at him and curses at him in French.

“Quit wavin’ ‘em around, _fils de putain,”_ she spits, and then she clenches her eyes shut and swears again.

“Concussion,” Alexios diagnoses. He glances over to Alkibiades- still pale and rattled, staring out the window at the bodies flying past- and then looks to Sokrates. Sokrates is a veteran, too. His face is grim-set and ashen, but thanks to his past experience as a soldier, he’s calm and collected even if he isn’t okay. “Sokrates, Alkibiades, I need you to get her out of here. Take her down the stairs, get her away from here-”

_rrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRR**RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR—**_

He freezes. The hair raises on his neck, and he and the others turn as one toward the south side of the bank of windows as a roar fills their ears. Alexios’s brain shuts down. His mouth falls open and every thought goes silent as he tracks the rolling wave of dust and debris as it sweeps past the windows and crashes down, down, down below. A great roar fills the air, rumbles past, and then… silence.

Silence.

…Silence.

“Oh, my God,” he breathes, and crosses himself with a shaking hand.

The South Tower of the World Trade Centers has just collapsed in on itself. The four of them sit there in the eerie silence, collectively numb, and it’s only after a moment that Sokrates’s voice cuts through the quiet.

“We… We have to go.” His gaze meets Alexios’s, eyes wide and dark in his pale face, and it actually takes a few seconds for his words to process through the shock. Alexios starts nodding as Sokrates sets his hand on Alkibiades’s shoulder and shakes him hard. “We have to go. Come on. Get up. Help me with Maria.”

“Okay,” Alkibiades rasps. “Okay. Okay.”

It takes some doing, but Sokrates gets Alkibiades to his feet, and between the two of them, they get Maria up and get her arms thrown over their shoulders. Alexios escorts them to the staircase landing and sees them down- “Be quick, but be careful, Sokrates- we don’t have long,” he says with a shudder- and then he turns and heads up the stairs again. He has to find Kyra and Thaletas. Kyra works- worked- on Floor 79, close to where the plane may have hit, but if she came down to see Thaletas, she might still be alive.

_God, please let them still be alive._

His legs pump beneath him, and Alexios pushes the fear and the shock deep down and keeps going, going.

Sixty-one. No survivors. Sixty-two. No survivors. Sixty-three. Three survivors, whom Alexios directs downstairs and outside. Sixty-four, one survivor, but the man’s been cut in half by debris and been driven mad with pain and fear, and won’t make it. Alexios gulps down bile and keeps climbing. Sixty-five, sixty-six. No survivors.

Sixty-seven. Alexios is panting hard again.

“Kyra!” he bellows, and coughs on the cloud of oily smoke that is boiling through the air above his head. “Thaletas!”

He cries for them, shouts at the top of his lungs, but there’s no response. Choking on the smoke, Alexios pushes into the main office space where Thaletas worked. It’s a disaster in there; office partitions have been knocked over, desks have been upended, and the entire place is coated in a layer of dust and litter. Shredded paper lays over everything like snowflakes.

“Kyra! Thaletas!”

A sob meets Alexios’s ears. He turns- and there is Kyra, huddled behind a desk. Blood slashes a red wash down the side of her face and her left wrist is laying at an odd angle, but her gaze is clear enough as she stares at him.

“A-Alexios?” she gasps, and then she is crying hard. Alexios crosses to her in a heartbeat.

“Kyra, where’s Thaletas?” he asks, and quickly checks her pupil dilation. No concussion.

Kyra sucks in a breath. “He-he-h-he went t-to the bathroom. We had a quickie in the broom closet, and then he went to th-the bathroom, and- and-”

“Okay. Breathe.” Alexios takes her pulse while Kyra sucks in a couple shallow breaths. “Okay. Which bathroom?”

“Down the hall, to the left.”

“Okay,” he repeats. “I’m taking you to the stairwell, and then I’m going to go find Thaletas.”

“Okay. Okay.” Kyra nods, and Alexios pulls her to her feet and takes her over to the door to the stairwell. She leans heavily against the frame, and once he’s sure that she’ll be okay, Alexios dashes down the hall to the men’s room.

“Thaletas!” he calls as he bursts through the door.

The response is immediate. “Here!”

Alexios finds his friend pinned under a pile of rubble in the corner where the urinals used to be. Thaletas is mostly pinned- the reason why he was unable to get back out to Kyra, no doubt- but when prompted, he answers several questions quickly and efficiently.

“Are you hurt?” Alexios asks as he lifts piece after piece of drywall and plaster and porcelain off his friend. It takes a few minutes, but he manages to get Thaletas’s arms and chest free, and then Thaletas helps him clear off his legs. “Are you pinned?”

“No, and no,” Thaletas responds, calmer than Alexios feels. “What happened?”

Alexios pauses, swallows, and goes back to digging out his friend. “I don’t know. There was an explosion up top. Then there was another at the South Tower. The South Tower just collapsed a few minutes ago.” He pauses and glances at his watch. _10:05._ “We have to get out. The South Tower is just… gone. It’s all gone. We’re running out of time.”

Thaletas’s hands flex on a piece of toilet lid. “And Kyra?”

“Waiting for us at the stairwell. She’s got a broken wrist, but she’s all right.”

Thaletas exhales. “Thank God.”

“Indeed.”

Together, they get the rest of the debris off Thaletas, and then they take off back down the hallway to where Kyra is waiting for them. By now, the smoke is so thick in the air that Alexios can’t see the ceiling at all. Kyra throws herself at her husband as soon as they reach her; she kisses him hard, and Alexios has to push them apart physically so that he can remind them that the clock is ticking and that they need to _move._

Floor sixty. Fifty-five. Alexios glances at his watch again. _10:10._ Fifty. Forty-five. Forty. _10:17. _Thirty-five. Thirty. Twenty-five. _10:20._ Twenty. Fifteen. Ten. _10:24._

“Help!”

Alexios swears. He shoves Thaletas and Kyra down the stairs before him, and then he detours into the office to the left. There’s a man stuck under a beam, there- a firefighter. Alexios crouches at the man’s side and grabs the beam, and lifts. God, it’s heavy. He strains and strains, roars with exertion- and the man pushes up, too, and manages to squirm out from under the beam. Alexios drops it hard, and they take a few seconds to catch their breath. Then they’re both up and moving.

“Get out!” the firefighter shouts, and pushes Alexios toward the staircase- and that’s when they hear it.

rrrrrrrr_rrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR**RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-**_

Alexios grabs the man by the arm and hauls him down the stairs. The fireman doesn’t hesitate. They both throw themselves down the stairs a whole flight at the time, bracing their hands on the railings and slinging their entire bodies down seven, eight, nine stairs at a time. They slingshot themselves around corners by grabbing onto the railings and pivot-stepping around the bends, and then hurl themselves down the next staircase. It’s a dizzying descent, but there’s no choice, because they have to get out, they have to get out, get out, _get **out-**_

Dust rains down on Alexios’s head. He catches sight of the floor markers- floor four- and that’s when it all comes crashing down.

The fireman throws Alexios against the wall. Covers him with his own body.

Alexios screams as the sky falls down around his ears.

_10:28._

* * *

_The Falling Man,_ Richard Drew, Photojournalist, Associated Press

11 September, 2001, 9:41:15 a.m. North Tower, WTC 1.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Greek Translations:**  
_Κασσανδρα:_ Kassandra.  
_αδελφή:_ Sister.  
_Αλεξιος:_ Alexios.  
_Mater:_ Mother.  
_Pater:_ Father.
> 
> _French Translations:_  
_Fils de putain:_ Son of a bitch.
> 
> Note: The prayers that Alkibiades, Sokrates, and Alexios say when they see the people falling are from a Greek Orthodox funeral liturgy, the Trisagion Service.
> 
> The bit about the people falling is a true story. According to eyewitness accounts, after the planes hit, the elevators were deactivated and the stairwells were blocked off above the 93rd floor in the North Tower. People tried to climb out the windows and climb down the facade of the tower, but lost their grips and fell. Others, realizing that they would not escape the burning tower, jumped of their own volition rather than burn alive.
> 
> "One woman walked out on a beam, crossed herself, commended her soul to heaven- and then just let herself fall."
> 
> "Every twenty seconds or so, you just heard this _bang,_ like a gunshot going off, and you just- you just knew, that was another body hitting the ground. _Bang... Bang... Bang._"


	6. Aftermath: Kleio and Kassandra, 11 Sep. 2001

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When your world ends, what more can you do but cast yourself upon the mercy of God and pray with all you have? Kass and Kleio both deal with the fallout after it all comes crashing down.

* * *

“Sister, why have you come? Your house is far, and you have never visited before. You tell me to stop grieving and not feel the many pains that prickle at my heart. But long ago I lost my lionhearted husband, a man more talented than any…”  
-Homer, _The Odyssey_

* * *

_12:05._

Everything is too bright. Too close. Too loud. Kassandra can’t make heads or tails of it. She’s been trying Brasidas, Kleio, and Alexios for hours, now- hours during which she hasn’t been able to get through to anyone, and now she’s almost on site at the World Trade Centers, and that’s when Brasidas finally picks up.

_“Kassandra, don’t you dare go there,”_ is the first thing he says. No ‘Hello,’ no ‘Kassandra, why are you calling me and not your brother if you need help,’ none of their usual banter. Brasidas’s voice is deadly serious, and Kass’s blood runs cold.

“What happened?” she demands in kind. “Where’s Alexios? Why aren’t he and Kleio picking up their phones? Shit, Brasidas, are you okay? What about them? Are they alive?”

_“Kleio’s alive, and so was Alexios, last I saw him,”_ Brasidas murmurs, and then he groans a tight groan like he’s in pain, and Kass freezes. “_Shit. Shit, Kassandra, just- shit. He went back in. He went back in to help other survivors. Got me and Kleio out, and the maláka just… he just ran back in, and now-”_ Brasidas’s breath hitches, and suddenly he’s sobbing, and Kassandra’s feet root her to the concrete below her.

She got off six stops away from the World Trade Centers, twelve city blocks and a whole bridge away, because the trains had stopped running across the bridges by that time and it’s taken her three hours to get here on foot. Now, she stands in the middle of the sidewalk just beyond the still-burning Marriott Hotel outside the North Tower and takes in the tableau of death before her.

_“It’s all gone, Kass. It’s all gone. I don’t think he got out.”_

It looks like the aftermath of a nuclear war. Everything is buried under a layer of dust and ash like a foot-deep drift of yellow-grey snow. Debris litters the streets. Some of it is still burning. Kass’s hand slowly drifts down from her ear, and then her knees sting and she realizes abruptly that she has fallen. Everything is utterly silent- or it would be, if music were not still blaring from the loudspeakers at the strip mall not far away. It’s a cheery song, upbeat.

The dissonance hits her hard. The realization hits harder. Kassandra bends over and throws up everything in her stomach, and then she dissolves into uncontrollable sobs.

“Oh, my God,” she’s moaning, over and over again. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”

She keens deep in her chest. The sound builds to a wail, and she raises her head to the sky and _screams._

“_Alexios!”_

* * *

_17:39._

Kleio is awake by the time Kassandra makes it to the jam-packed hospital. Kass’s phone is almost dead; she has spent the last five and a half hours on the phone with Brasidas, vacillating between panic and dread and a deadly calm that chills her to her own core, and by the time that she finally arrives at the trauma center of Belleview Hospital, she’s at least breathing steadily. Still, nothing could have prepared her for seeing Kleio with her leg in a cast and stitches on her forehead and wires in her arms. Nothing could have prepared Kassandra for seeing Brasidas in the next bed over with a similar injury. Both of them look pale in the harsh hospital lights, and the starched white bed linens leave them washed-out and tiny-looking.

Kleio’s bloodshot eyes land on Kass the minute she appears down the ward, and Kleio waves her over. Kass goes to her, and then she’s hugging the older woman tight, and the sobs escape them both in a torrent of tears and babbling. Yes, Kleio is going to be fine. No, she’s not okay, not with a broken leg and a concussion and with Alexios still missing, presumed dead- but she’s going to be fine, physically, and oh, they forgot a condom just this morning, so she may end up pregnant, and what if Alexios never comes back, and…?

It’s just a mess, and Kass can’t stop thinking about how much she and Alexios have been arguing the past few days, and how the last words she ever said to him were said in anger and ungratefulness.

_You don’t want to be here, you don’t want to be alive, and you certainly don’t want anything to do with me, so go fuck yourself._

How could she have said that to him? How could she have been such a shit, when Alexios works himself to the bone and studies hard so that he can provide for her? He didn’t have to take that on. He could have left her to the foster care system after their parents died. He could have cut too deeply, on any of those times she found him with a razor at his wrist or arm or thigh after he came back from Kosovo. He could have left her to fend for herself.

But he never abandoned her. Even on those days when she caught him staring off in the middle-distance and thumbing the safety of his gun- even on those days when she looked into his eyes and saw a dead man staring back at her- he never left her. Alexios never left her, and he never gave up on her even when he gave up on himself.

And now… Now, the last thing she ever said to him was “go fuck yourself.”

The phone rings. At first, Kass thinks she’s imagining things, but then she pulls back and looks at her phone screen, and-

“Oh, my God,” she breathes, and fumbles it open. “It’s Alexios!”

Kleio goes quiet and Brasidas watches Kass like a hawk, and Kassandra plugs her free ear with a finger and says, “Alexios? Alexios! Alexios, are you there? Answer me! Alexios!”

She can hear him breathing on the other end. He doesn’t reply, though, and the connection is unstable. It sounds like he may be underground.

Then, _“…’m here. Kass.”_

“Oh my God!” she gasps, and her knees go weak.

“Is that him? Kass, is that Alexios?” Kleio demands, and Brasidas says, “Put him on speaker and find out where he is!”

Kass covers the mike with the palm of her hand and turns to them, barks, “It’s him! Now, quiet! I can barely hear him.” And then she hits the speaker phone button and puts the mike next to her lips. “Alexios, where are you? Are you okay? Oh, God, which hospital are you at? Where’d they take you?”

He’s quiet for a moment. She can hear his raspy breathing- it sounds wet, like he has liquid in his mouth- and then he coughs.

_“I’m…” _He hesitates, and then he’s coughing again. _“I’m… I’m… I don’t know, I…”_ Kleio and Brasidas have gone quiet. A sniffle crackles through the speaker. _“Kass? Kass, please. Please…”_ He takes a sharp breath, and then he’s coughing, coughing, deep, violent, wet coughs that splatter even through the phone call. Kass’s legs have turned to water beneath her. She sinks into the chair beside Kleio’s bed, and when next Alexios speaks, his voice is shaking and thick. _“Please, Kass, please, don’t be mad at me. Don’t be mad. I’m sorry, I tried, I really did…”_

Holy shit. Alexios is scared. He’s terrified. Kassandra hasn’t heard him sound like this since he told her their parents died.

_Oh, God, please no._

“Mad?” Her voice cracks, and suddenly she hears Alexios crying. He’s all-out sobbing, hiccupping and coughing, and Kass’s breath speeds up and she fists her hand in her shirt. _No. Please, no, not him._ She babbles, begs, pleads. “Why would I be mad? Where are you, Alexios? Please tell me. I promise you, I’m not mad, just please, tell me where you are so I can come get you.”

Alexios’s cough crackles through the line. She hears him gulp, and then he blows out a breath that sounds like a strong breeze, like he’s physically screwing himself back under control.

_“Don’t come here. Whatever you do, don’t you come here.”_

“Where are you?” Nothing. Just his raspy breathing. Kass’s heart jumps into her throat. She wants to run. “Alexios? Alexios!”

His next words are soft. “_I’m… I’m sorry, Kass. I’m sorry… I can’t keep my promise to you.”_ Promise? What promise? _“Guess I… I just wanted… t’hear your voice.”_ A sigh. _“I love you, Kass. If… If they don’t find us in time…” _Another cough, and another splattering sound. Is he coughing up blood? His voice comes out rough. _“I’m so proud of you, Kass. B-Be… the good woman I- I know you are.”_

Kassandra’s sight is blurring. Her throat is so tight she’s nearly wheezing, and she’s breathing so hard she’s getting dizzy. “Alexios? Alexios, don’t you dare go, please don’t go, don’t hang up. Tell me where you are. Please, Alexios, just tell me where you are. Stay with me.”

_“…Kass?”_ The soft question sends her into silence. Kass’s hands are shaking. When she looks over at Kleio, the older woman is staring at her with wide, watering eyes, one hand over her mouth, and tears are streaming down her cheeks. Brasidas has his eyes closed and his head partially turned away. His jaw is clenched. Alexios coughs again, but it’s weaker, this time, and when he speaks again, his voice has gone quiet, as though he’s losing the strength to speak. _“You… You remember the sea?”_

Kass sniffles. Blinks rapidly. “What?”

_“…Grandfather’s villa.”_ He’s almost whispering, now. Kass can picture his expression, the way his forehead will be relaxed, his eyebrows arched over his closed eyes, his long eyelashes fluttering against his high cheekbones. _“The one in Sparta, in Lakonia. We used to wake up early… just to see the sun rise-”_

He breaks off into a sudden fit of spluttering coughs, and then a groan breaks through the phone that Kassandra has only ever heard when he’s in severe pain.

She gulps and can’t hold back the tears that finally break free. Kass fishes for a long-ago memory, but it will no longer come, so she draws on Alexios’s own stories of their childhood for inspiration. “…and the sunlight on the water looked like a thousand diamonds?”

_“…Yeah.”_ He sighs softly. _“I can’t… I can’t see it, Kass. I c-can’t see anything, anymore.”_

She strangles a sob in her throat and presses a hand to her mouth. He’s in the darkness, somewhere. He’s in the dark, and she can’t reach him, can’t comfort him. Her brother is dying alone in the dark, and he doesn’t even have his memories to draw on.

“That’s all right, Alexios,” she chokes out, and the words she babbles hardly register, but she’s in earnest, and for once in her seventeen years, she really, really wants it. She wants what she promises. “It’s okay. When you get back, I don’t care if we have to quit the apartment and do odd jobs on the road, I’ll take you back there, I promise. Just stay with me, okay? Stay with me. Stay with me.”

Silence. Then, a soft sigh. _“Will you… Will you tell me of it, Kass? What’ll it be like?”_

She sniffles. “We’ll go back to the villa. You know it’s still ours. We’ll have to fix it up, but you’re big and strong-” Because she can’t picture him weak, bleeding, dying, not her invincible elder brother. “-and we’ll have Kleio and Brasidas there to help, too. We’ll repaint the walls white and blue, just as they should be. We’ll fix the leak in the roof.” Because after all this time, there’s bound to be a leak in the damn roof. “When it gets hot out, we’ll all sleep on the rooftop together, and the sunrise will wake us in the morning. It’ll glitter off the bay, so much bluer than the Hudson is, and the light will make the snows on Mount Taygetos glow like pure gold.” She pauses, swallows. “Can you smell the olives and the hyacinths? Can you smell the sweet peas, Alexios?” Pause. “Can you imagine it?”

…Nothing. Kassandra’s blood turns to sludge in her veins.

“…Alexios?” she calls. Still nothing. She takes a few rapid breaths. “Alexios…?” Nothing. _God. Oh, God, please_\- “Alexios!”

Silence. She calls his name again, and again. Nothing.

And then the line goes dead.

Kassandra wants to puke.

But she can’t. Kleio is as much of a mess as Kassandra is, right now, loves Alexios just as much as Kassandra does, and is worried as sick as Kassandra is. Kass won’t let herself be weak in front of Kleio, not when the other woman has just gone through hell and may yet go even further into it, if they never find Alexios. In the end, Kassandra holds Kleio tight while the other woman cries herself back to sleep, and that’s when Kassandra slips away from Kleio and joins Brasidas at the next bed over.

At first, they say nothing. Brasidas stares up at the ceiling, lost in thought as though he hasn’t even noticed Kassandra’s approach, but after a moment, he turns blue-grey eyes on her, made even bluer by the red that rims them. Kass returns his stare. Then Brasidas lifts up his near arm, and Kassandra’s breath hitches, and she climbs onto the bed beside him and curls into his side, and bawls her eyes out into his hospital shirt. Brasidas is hot and solid against her, and his arm is a heavy weight around her back. It feels good. He feels good. Kass wraps herself around him and lets him comfort her, comforts him in return as best she can, and she has no idea how much time passes. It could be hours. She doesn’t even feel the fluttering in the pit of her stomach that usually comes whenever she’s in close proximity to him.

Normally, she wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye. She would blush and go quiet for the first hour of being in his presence, and then she would maybe start opening up, and if she caught him smiling at her, her cheeks would go warm and she would end up putting her foot in her mouth repeatedly. It’s been like that since she was fifteen and first started noticing just how sculpted his arms and shoulders really are, how much she really likes hearing his laugh, likes his sense of humor, his sense of honor and justice and of what is right.

Now, she clings to him and breaks down, and wishes she had her brother there with them.

After a while, Brasidas strokes her hair and pushes her back. When Kass withdraws slightly, she looks up and meets his gaze. Brasidas strokes her cheek, cups her chin in his hand. His eyes flick from her gaze to her lips and back.

He leans down, and presses his lips to hers.

Kass goes still for a second- and then she sighs and melts into him, opens up and mouths at his lower lip for a second before she nibbles on it. Brasidas’s breath floats warm across her cheeks. His hand shifts and buries itself in the hair at the base of her skull. He cradles her head like it’s an egg. Parts his lips and flicks his tongue against hers, once, twice, then he probes a bit deeper when she moans and leans into him a bit more and fists her fingers in the front of his shirt.

He tastes like Listerine and ash and blood. Kass shivers and whines into him. Brasidas pulls back.

“Sorry,” he pants, and he rubs his thumb across her cheekbone. Kassandra abruptly realizes that she’s shaking.

“Don’t be,” she returns, breathless. She huffs a breath of laughter, and then offers him a shy smile. “I’ve… I’ve wanted to do that for a couple years.”

“Really?” He studies her, still stroking her cheek, and she catches the shiny edge of a fresh burn along the outside of his wrist. “Does it bother you that I can’t say the same?”

Some disappointment colors her cheeks, but Brasidas frames her face with his other hand before she can turn away.

“I’ve only wanted to do it for six months or so,” he murmurs, and bites his lip. “Watching you grow from a girl into a young woman has been amazing, Kassandra, but… why ever would you have wanted an old man like me?”

Kass recoils and frowns down at him in sheer dumbfounded confusion. “Who wouldn’t? You’re smart, funny, kind, honorable, not to mention you have your life in order… I mean… I’m not looking for a sugar-daddy. I still want to have my own career and my own life, but… Who wouldn’t want to have you be a part of their life? Who _wouldn’t_ want to be with you, just for your own sake?”

She blushes, then, and licks her lips, rubs a wrinkle of his shirt between her fingers and tries not to feel how amazing his thigh feels against her own even through the hard plastic of his cast.

“I mean… I just… That’s… That didn’t come out right, but… I just…”

He tugs her back down and kisses her again.

When they part once more, Kassandra is breathless and blushing, and Brasidas is looking at her like she’s some kind of angel fallen straight into his hospital bed, and Kass can’t help but giggle as she straightens up and swings her legs back over the side of the bed.

“If Alexios were here, he’d probably make some smartass comment about how I should get out of this bed before it turns into a bad porno flick,” she chuckles- and then freezes as a sudden flurry of activity and shouting echoes down the hall.

_“Two more survivors, here!”_

_“-need another ten pints of oh-negative, and another ten for this other one, stat-”_

_“-impalement wound to the left side of the abdomen-”_

_“-impalement to thoracic cavity, close proximity to the aorta, impalement to left leg, broken ribs, punctured lung-”_

_“We’re losing him! Get me oxygen and blood, now!”_

A trio of paramedics rushes past with one bed, bearing a dusky-skinned fireman, and then another trio rushes past, pushing the stretcher’s occupant down the hall even while they press a mask to his face and start pumping oxygen into his lungs. They flash past, and Kass is on her feet and following them even before she hears Brasidas calling her name, because all she can see is the memory of that pale, bloodied, ash-streaked face beneath the oxygen mask and the paramedics hollering at the people down the hall because _he wasn’t breathing on his own._

_Alexios._

Kassandra trots down the hallway after the paramedics and tries to hold back her sobs, but she’s not entirely successful. She manages to trail them all the way down to the trauma wing doors, and in the chaos of all the people milling about, she slips into the ward behind them. She doesn’t go into the operating room, though, because she knows that she’d have to soap up and scrub up and she doesn’t know what she would do except stand there and maybe risk her brother’s life by contaminating a sterile space if she went in-

The paramedics and the gurney reappear through a thick glass window to her left, and Kassandra rushes over and watches, unable to breathe, as the paramedics count to three and transfer Alexios’s limp body from the stretcher to the operating table.

One paramedic attaches an oxygen meter to his finger and probes to his temples, and fires up the EKG.

Nothing. One of the paramedics shouts for a crash cart. Another is attaching leads to Alexios’s chest. Someone wheels over a massive machine and one of them pulls a pair of paddles off it.

“Clear!” he barks. The other two jump back, and Kassandra has a brief glimpse of Alexios’s face- waxy and fish-belly-white, eyes bruised and closed tight, blood streaked and spotted all over his mouth and chin- and then the one paramedic presses the paddles to his chest, and Alexios’s body jolts off the operating table, and then flops back down like a dead trout. There’s a flicker on the EKG, and then it goes flat again. The paramedic shouts at the others to turn up the voltage, and then shocks Alexios once more. Again, Alexios arches. Again, Alexios falls back.

His arm flops down off the edge of the gurney. His fingers are curled almost gracefully in toward his palm; they are coated in blood and ash, and it’s streaked up almost to his wrist.

No movement.

Nothing.

Kassandra fists her hands in the hems of her sleeves and stares, wide-eyed and unblinking, at her brother’s still face.

“Clear!”

Another jolt. Same results.

“C’mon, c’mon- turn it up! We still have brain activity! Where the fuck is the surgeon?”

The machine whines. The paramedic rubs the paddles together and hits him again. Alexios bows so far off the gurney that Kassandra is certain she hears his spine crack. Then he flops back down. No result.

The surgeon bustles in, then. He takes one look at Alexios, lying there so still, not breathing, with the EKG still reading that he has no pulse- and then he sighs. The man’s shoulders slump, and he shakes his head and waves a hand.

“Call it,” he says.

“But Doctor-”

“I said call it!” the surgeon retorts. “He’s already dead. There’s no saving him, and I’ve got another fifty-six patients to triage.”

There’s a brief moment of silence. The paramedics glance between themselves, and the surgeon turns away.

Kassandra balls up her fist and _slams_ it against the glass. Every person in that room jumps and whirls around, stares at her. Kassandra’s world goes blurry around the edges.

_“Alexios Agiadis, don’t you dare die on me!” _she bellows, and smashes her hand against the glass again. _“You’re not allowed to die! You promised! You fucking **promised!”**_

She keeps hollering and pounding on the glass, and the paramedics shake their heads. The one with the paddles turns back to the cart, reaches out to put them back- and then hesitates. Kassandra howls her grief at the body on the bed- _don’t you dare, Alexios! You fucking **look **at me, you goddamned motherfucking **corpse-**_ and then the paramedic spins back around, yells “Clear!” and hits Alexios with the current again.

Alexios jolts off the bed. Falls.

Flatline.

The paramedic grinds his teeth- “Hail Mary, full of grace-” -and then he zaps him again.

Alexios jolts. Falls.

…

…

…

The paramedic sighs and bows over the bed. “Call it.”

“Seven-forty-nine p.m., September eleventh, two-thousand and one.”

Kass keens and falls against the glass. “No. No, God no, please no…” She pushes her forehead against the glass and wails while the tears stream hot down her face. “Alexios! Alexios, please, wake up!”

…

…

…

…_beep._

Kassandra’s head jolts up. She stares, wide-eyed and hopeful.

…_beep. Beep. Bee-beep._

The rhythm is unsteady and faint, but it’s there, and suddenly a frenzy of action engulfs the operating room. The surgeon rushes back in, and they cut Alexios’s blood-soaked clothing off him and go to work, heedless of the fact that he’s all but naked in the middle of this chilly hospital, and all Kassandra can do is stare.

There’s… There’s so much blood. Alexios is so pale, and there’s _so much blood,_ but… his _heart_ is _beating._

There’s a piece of rebar sticking out of his thigh. The wound has torn, and the hole is a jagged line cutting its way through the meat of his left leg. They don’t even bother with that wound, at first. First, they turn Alexios onto his side, and- and God, there’s a pool of blood underneath him. How much more can he lose before he has nothing left? He’s bleeding sluggishly from a stab wound in his upper back on the left side, near where his heart is. The trauma surgeon goes to work on that, first. He spreads open the hole and goes to work inside, and all the while, the nurses and paramedics are bustling around, hooking Alexios up to monitors and bags of blood. Two of them open up his mouth and force a bundle of tubes down his throat- he’s still not breathing on his own. They throw out status updates and directions- _Get me a shot of adrenaline. He’s going into massive organ failure, we need more blood asap. Get some saline and antibiotics in here.-_ and Kassandra’s head spins just watching it.

And through it all, Alexios never moves on his own. Never makes a sound.

Kassandra just watches and waits… and prays.

* * *

_23:41._

Kassandra sits beside her brother’s bed in the ICU. She’s decked out in scrubs and a mask, full gloves and hair net and everything. She’s not risking anything, not when she watched Alexios crash another two times while they were operating on him, but even so, she has to admit that his color is a little better than it was, and even though he looks absolutely terrible with his mouth taped shut around all sorts of tubes, and monitors and IVs bristling from him on every side, he’s one of the most beautiful things she has ever seen.

Because he’s _alive._ Alexios is _alive,_ and after today, she’s never, ever going to take that for granted again.

_Tap-tap-tap._

She blinks herself out of her vigil and turns. There is a small crowd of people standing at the window. Kass recognizes a couple of the faces, and she can see Brasidas’s head poking into the bottom of the window, and she can see the top of Kleio’s head beside his. They must be in wheelchairs. Kassandra glances back at Alexios for a second, and then she gets up and pads over to the door, and when she emerges, she’s greeted by almost a dozen pairs of eyes set in pale faces.

Kass swallows. “Hi.”

Brasidas- he _is_ in a wheelchair, the madman- wheels himself forward, and Kassandra deftly sidesteps his broken leg when he almost runs it into her knees. He winces and offers her an apology- “Sorry, still getting the hang of this thing,”- and she waves it off.

“We wanted to see how he’s doing,” Brasidas explains, and then gestures back to the group behind him. “Alexios saved us all- or saved our loved ones, today.”

Kassandra absorbs that for a second, and then she turns her gaze to the people before her as Brasidas introduces them one by one.

“Alkibiades, Sokrates, Kyra, and Thaletas,” Brasidas begins, gesturing to four people that Kassandra vaguely recognizes from her rare visits to Alexios at the Hub. Then he goes on. “He pulled me and Kleio out of the rubble himself. Maria Thorpe, they found on the sixtieth floor, and this is her husband, Altaïr ibn la-Ahad.” The woman Brasidas points out is sporting a bandage around her head and a splinted wrist. She waves slightly to Kassandra, and the dusky-skinned man beside her wraps a protective arm around her shoulders. He meets Kassandra’s gaze with eyes like a hawk’s, and gives her a solemn nod. Brasidas hesitates, and then he glances back to the last three members of the group: a Native American woman with grey spiderwebbing her black hair, a man with iron-grey hair, and a man with grayed blond hair. “And this is Haytham Kenway, his wife, Ziio, and his father, Edward.”

Haytham steps forward. His eyes are watery, and he holds out his hand to Kassandra. She stares at it for a second. Haytham’s hand is shaking, and it’s with dread that Kass looks back up into his damp, blue-grey eyes.

Kassandra takes his hand.

Haytham steps close to her and sets his other hand on her shoulder. “Thank you. Thank your brother. He found my son, there in the rubble. According to Connor, Alexios put himself through a lot just hauling Connor back over to the place where the first responders found them. Alexios saved my son’s life, and thanks to him, my grandson will have his father, once he’s finally born.”

Kass’s knees go weak. _Oh. Oh, thank God._

She swallows roughly and shakes Haytham’s hand, nods sporadically and squeezes tight.

“I’m- I’m glad,” she manages, and draws a tremulous breath. When she next speaks, her voice is rough. “He, uh…They’ve got him in a medically-induced coma. He still isn’t breathing on his own. They, uh… they still haven’t said whether or not he’ll make it.”

And that’s the hard truth of it. Kass gulps and glances away. Her gaze lands upon her brother through the glass, and Alexios looks tiny and weak, surrounded by all those machines, with his skin so pale and that dark bruising around his eyes. She never, ever thought she would associate those thoughts with her strong, determined brother, but it’s true. Alexios looks _fragile,_ now, with all his scars on display for the world to see. She traces the jagged shrapnel scars that score the bicep of his right arm and dot his chest and neck and cut through his right eyebrow and left cheek. She lingers on the self-harm scars at the inside of his right elbow and wrist, deeper and larger than she remembers them ever looking before, a glaring testament to the depths of his pain and the lack of help and support for the walking wounded.

She takes in the heavy bandaging around his shoulder and his uncovered left leg, the gauze at the left side of his forehead and the dark sutures visible beneath it.

Kassandra swallows hard and turns back to Haytham, and that is when Ziio steps forward and enfolds Kassandra in her arms. Ziio smells like honeysuckle and lavender, and her skin is warm and her muscles solid against Kassandra. Kass towers over her by a few inches at least, but suddenly she feels very small, and Kass’s breath hitches, and just like that, she’s sobbing. She buries her face in Ziio’s shoulder and cries her eyes out, and twists her fingers into the back of Ziio’s light jacket, and one by one, more bodies press in, hugging her tight. Haytham embraces his wife and Kassandra both from Kass’s right; Edward nudges in on her left and runs his hand back and forth across Kassandra’s shoulders. Kyra, Thaletas, Alkibiades, and Sokrates join them, and Maria’s hand trails across Kassandra’s braid where it crests her head. Altaïr stands back a little, but when she meets his gaze through watering vision, his own eyes are damp.

“Your brother saved my wife and our unborn child, today,” Altaïr murmurs, and the gratitude in his eyes and voice are staggering. “I owe him everything.”

Kassandra’s breath hitches even harder, and she buries her face back in Ziio’s shoulder and lets the tears come.

She doesn’t know who starts it, but someone raises his voice over her sobs, and it takes her a moment to recognize the voice, it’s so rough with emotion.

“Lord God in Heaven.” Brasidas? “O Lord Almighty, Healer of our souls and bodies, You who put down and raise up, who chastise and heal also; do You now, in Your great mercy, visit our brother Alexios, who is wounded.” His voice cracks on the last syllable, and he clears his throat before continuing, “Stretch forth Your hand that is full of healing and health, and get him up from his bed, and cure him of his hurts. Put away from him the spirit of pain and fever to which he is bound; and if he has sins and transgressions, grant to him remission and forgiveness, in that You love mankind.”

His voice breaks again, and Kass catches a soft sob.

Kleio’s voice rises, then, and picks up where Brasidas left off. “Yea, Lord my God, pity Your creation, through the compassions of Your Only-Begotten Son, together with Your All-Holy, Good, and Life-creating Spirit, with whom You are blessed, now and forever, and to the ages of ages, Amen.”

“Amen,” chorus everyone in the group.

Then Altaïr clears his throat. “Bismillaah. Bismillaah. Bismillaah. I ask Allah the Almighty, the Lord of the Mighty Throne, to heal Alexios Agiadis. As’alullaahal-‘Adheema Rabbal-‘Arshil-‘Adheemi ‘an yashfiyaka.”

He repeats the prayer six more times, and then concludes with, “Adhhib il-ba’s, Rabbi l-naas washfi anta al-Shaafi laa shifaa ailla shifaa uka shifaa an laa yughaadir saqaman. Remove the harm, O Lord of humankind, and heal him, for You are the Healer and there is no healing except Your healing, with a healing which does not leave any disease behind. Bismillaah.”

“Amen,” reply the rest of them.

And then Ziio runs her hand over Kassandra’s hair and takes a breath.

“Oh Great Spirit, Creator of all things,” Ziio sings, the tune soft and warbling. “Human beings, trees, grass, berries. Help us, be kind to us. Let us be happy on earth. Let us lead our children to a good life and old age. These our people; give them good minds to love one another. Oh Great Spirit, be kind to us. Give these people the favor to see green trees, green grass, flowers, and berries this next spring. So we all meet again, oh Great Spirit, we ask of you.”

“Amen,” comes the soft, collective intonation, and Kassandra… Kassandra feels very small. All these people, of all these different faiths, are praying fervently for her brother’s health and recovery, and it leaves her feeling small and protected and loved. It’s humbling.

Shaking, she lets herself be drawn into their fold, sinks to her knees, and bows her head against Ziio’s shoulder.

“God,” Kassandra breathes. Distantly, she realizes she’s gripping the jet crucifix that rests beneath her shirt, the crucifix that Alexios gave her what feels like a lifetime ago. “God, please, I know I don’t pray, not nearly as often as I should, but if you’re listening, please. Please. Please, don’t take my brother just yet. Please don’t call him to your side. He still has too much to do. He promised me he wouldn’t leave me, and I promised him we would return to our home in Greece just one last time. I promised him he would see the snows on the mountain, the sun on the sea. I promised him we would look upon your creation together again in peace, and Lord-” Her voice breaks, and she shatters into Ziio’s arms again. “-Lord, he’s had so little peace in the past three years. Please, just grant him peace and healing in this life, and please don’t take him from me just yet.”

“Amen,” whispers Ziio in Kassandra’s ear, and the word is echoed by every voice around her.

_Amen._

* * *

_15 September, 2001. 14:25._

Kleio rubs her thumb across Alexios’s scarred knuckles and sighs, hangs her head over the back of her wheelchair, tries to release the tension from her shoulders. She’s only partially successful; the constant beep-beep-beep of the EKG is both reassuring and grating all at once, and she eyes Kassandra with envy where the young woman is dozing in a chair in the corner with Brasidas staring out the window at her side. Kleio feels like it’s been days since she last slept. Between the nightmares from the attack- and it _was _a terrorist attack, and no mistake- and the all-consuming worry over Alexios, Kleio doesn’t think she’s slept a wink since the night of the tenth.

It’s hard to think that it was less than a week ago that Alexios proposed to her, that they took their relationship to the next level. She already misses sleeping beside him, misses his heat and the firm, solid weight of him pressed up against her, the gentle rhythm of his breathing. She misses the hitch in his breath when he starts having a nightmare, misses the soft murmur of her name when she calms him out of it. She longs for his love, his kisses, the thickness of him buried within her, the solid weight of his hips between her thighs. She longs for his voice, his soft laughter, his happy smile and the quick flash of his grin. She even misses the fire in his eyes when he’s angry, the downturn to his lips when he’s sad or depressed or disappointed.

What she wouldn’t give to see his eyes again right now.

“How is he?”

Kleio startles with a gasp, nearly upends herself out of her wheelchair, and her heart is still pounding when she grabs onto the arm of her chair with one hand and presses the other to her chest, trying to steady the erratic jolt of her heartbeat in her chest. She sucks down a couple deep breaths and turns to the intruder.

She’s met with vibrant green eyes framed by long eyelashes and high cheekbones and dusky skin, and a messy fall of curly sable hair. The woman is of some mixed race, possibly of Native American and Caucasian descent, and she’s sitting in a wheelchair just like Kleio’s. The only difference is that both her feet are sitting on the chair’s footrests, and she has a newborn baby resting in a sling across her chest.

The new mother offers Kleio a small smile and wheels herself into the room beside her.

“Sorry,” the woman murmurs, lowering her voice as she glances to Kassandra in the corner and then to Brasidas, who has turned his gaze over to them. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Kleio clears her throat. “It’s okay. I’m sorry, how do you know Alexios?”

The woman nods to the baby on her chest as she draws parallel with Kleio.

“He brought my husband back to me and my baby,” the woman says, and then offers Kleio her hand. “I’m Cosette. Cosette Delacroix-Kenway. Connor Kenway is my husband. Alexios saved his life.”

“Oh.” Kleio shakes Cosette’s hand and then gestures to the baby on her chest. “I met Haytham, Ziio, and Edward a few days ago. Guess Haytham wasn’t kidding when he implied that the baby hadn’t been born, yet.”

Cosette huffs a soft chuckle. “No, he wasn’t. I’m a nine-one-one dispatcher. When we got the call about the Towers, I decided to keep working until my water broke. Then Alexios and Conner called in, and found out I’d just gone into labor, and Connor just about chewed me a new one while Alexios was putting pressure on the wound in his side.” She and Kleio share a small smile, and then Cosette looks down at the baby in her arms again. When she moves a fold of the sling, Kleio makes out the curve of one tiny cheek, blessed with the same dusky hue as its parents, and a thick mop of straight black hair and a little button nose. “This is our son. We decided on Corbin, and I’m sticking with that, but after what Alexios did for Connor… I want to name him at least partially after him.”

Cosette peers at Kleio from under her eyelashes, looking a bit bashful, and Kleio’s throat is tight. “Is that okay, you think? I’m not thinking Alexios, per se, but maybe Alexander? Corbin Alexander? I still have to discuss it with Connor when he wakes up, but… but…”

She trails off and presses the side of her hand to her mouth, and Cosette turns away, blinks rapidly, swallows so hard Kleio catches the click of the other woman’s throat sticking to itself. Cosette’s knuckles are white where she grips the arm of her wheelchair. Her breathing is carefully measured.

Kleio sniffles, and nods. “I… I think he’d be honored. He’s always held Connor in high regard. I think he’d get a kick out of it. Maybe he’d ask what the hell you were thinking, naming a kid after a screwup like him- his words, not mine- but he’d be cooing at the baby the whole time and he wouldn’t stop beaming for two days straight.”

Cosette coughs out a watery chuckle, and when she meets Kleio’s gaze again, something passes between them that Kleio has never felt before for a stranger. It feels like empathy, understanding.

Kinship.

“Would you like me to hold vigil with you?” Cosette asks after a moment. “Connor evicted me from his room so that he could- and I quote- ‘sleep without you hovering and fretting, goddamn, woman, I’m not dead yet.’” They chuckle together, and Cosette glances away briefly before she meets Kleio’s gaze again. “I… I’m not usually this needy, but I know I could use the company.”

Kleio doesn’t even have to think about it.

“I’d be glad for your company,” she replies, and she reaches over and takes Cosette’s hand in her free one. Cosette’s fingers curl around Kleio’s.

It feels like holding the hand of a sister.

* * *

_2 October, 2001. 15:39._

Kleio swallows thickly and runs her thumb across her fiancé’s knuckles again. He’s finally strong enough to breathe on his own again, and since the doctors decided to take him off the medications inducing his coma, they’ve taken out the feeding tube, too. It’s a relief to see him without the tubes shoved down his throat. He still looks thin, though, beneath the paper gown. Kleio thinks he’s probably lost some muscle mass, even though it’s only been two weeks since he was hurt.

So much has happened. She has so much to tell him.

If she weren’t staring so intently at his face, she would have missed it, but- there. His eyelids flicker. Kleio’s heart leaps in her chest.

“Alexios?” she calls softly, hardly daring to hope. “Alexios?”

No response. She sits back again with a soft sigh and goes back to stroking his knuckles.

“Well, there’s a lot going on,” she murmurs, more to fill the silence than anything else. “Cosette had her baby. Connor’s doing well. They named him Corbin Alexander, after you. You saved so many people, Alexios. You’re a hero, you know? You made a lot of friends, that day.” She pauses. Swallows. “Please wake up.”

Kleio licks her lips and presses a hand to her belly, still flat beneath her shirt.

“I have a lot to tell you. Please wake up.”

Alexios doesn’t respond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Greek Translations:_  
_Maláka:_ Asshole, prick, shit; all-purpose epithet.
> 
> _Arabic Translations:_  
_Bismillaah:_ In the name of Allah.  
_As’alullaahal-‘Adheema Rabbal-‘Arshil-‘Adheemi ‘an yashfiyaka:_ I ask Almighty Allah, Lord of the Magnificent Throne, to make you well. (From the Muslim Dua for Visiting the Sick.)  
_Adhhib il-ba’s, Rabbi l-naas washfi anta al-Shaafi laa shifaa ailla shifaa uka shifaa an laa yughaadir saqaman:_ Remove the harm, O Lord of humankind, and heal him, for You are the Healer and there is no healing except Your healing, with a healing which does not leave any disease behind.
> 
> So, we're past the hard part. I'm not going to lie, the last chapter was what I was hung up on for months, and this chapter came together real fast in comparison. I've got two chapters to go, and one of them is already completed.
> 
> The prayer that Brasidas and Kleio pray in this chapter is a modified of the Greek Orthodox prayer for the sick, and the Arabic one that Altaïr says is the Muslim Dua for visiting the sick, as well as another one. The prayer that Ziio recites was one I found under a general Native American list of prayers, and it was specifically for the Iroquois, so I'm not sure if it is legitimately Mohawk or not, but it was the one that fit. Out of all the people who came to visit Alexios, they're all his friends, or family of his friends, and people whose lives he saved, so I figure that, even if they aren't technically religious, they'd offer their support.
> 
> That's the thing about 9/11: It brought together people of all faiths and creeds, ethnicities and origins, and it resulted in a national unity that we hadn't seen since Pearl Harbor, and which we haven't seen since. All the horror of that day, all the lives lost, resulted in an outpouring of support for our fellow man. I wanted to show that, here.
> 
> God bless you all!


	7. Belleview Hospital: Alexios, 15 Oct. 2001

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They say that the return to consciousness is a gradual one, that the senses trickle back in one by one until you open your eyes and take a deep breath and realize that you're still alive.
> 
> Alexios comes awake screaming.

* * *

“I am grateful to you for giving me my heart’s desire: a passage home, with gifts. I hope the gods maintain my luck. When I am home, I pray to find my wife still faultless, and my loved ones safe.”  
-Homer, _The Odyssey._

* * *

_15 October, 2001. 21:16._

They say that the return to consciousness is a gradual one. Peaceful, with a slow progression of brainwaves flattening from spikes to gentle waves as the neurons begin firing and triggering a release of hormones that drags you out of the black oblivion and into wakefulness. They say it’s supposed to be like blinking your eyes.

Alexios comes awake screaming.

For a long moment, everything is dark and blurred, and the stench of smoke is so thick in his nose and his tongue is so dry that he’s convinced that he’s still buried beneath the rubble. He thrashes. Heat tears through his wounded shoulder, and his leg explodes with agony, and then he smacks his arms on something hard, and the pain jolts him into tearful alertness and he howls as his eyes fly open at last.

Everything is so _white,_ so _sterile_ and _clean. _Alexios groans and glances around, and his breathing is too fast. His heartbeat thunders in his ears. There’s an EKG blaring somewhere to his left. Fluorescent lights glare down at him from above, and- and is that an IV, over his right shoulder?

_Where the fuck am I? What happened?_

He’s not registering this well.

Something touches his hand. He flinches at the sensation and whirls toward the source- and hazel eyes stare calmly back at him out of an olive-skinned face framed by waves of raven hair. Alexios gasps for breath for a moment. Then he realizes who it is he’s staring at, and he blinks hard at her, gulps down oxygen, darts his gaze around the room. Blue-grey eyes regard him from beside the window, and a blur of motion grabs his attention from his right again. He jolts back from the movement. Then he actually sees who it is, and suddenly he’s sucking down air fast, too fast. What’s she doing here? What’re they all doing here? God, they have to get out, have to get out, get out, get out, get _out-_

“Alexios.” Fingertips gently touch his cheek, and she turns his face until he meets her gaze. Kleio licks her lips and then presses a kiss to his knuckles where she has her hand wrapped around his. “Alexios. Breathe. Come back to me, love. Come back.”

She uncurls his fingers from his fist and then presses a kiss to the center of his palm. Alexios stares at her. What the fuck is she doing? His gaze darts around the room again. They have to get out-

“Alexios. Alexios.” Her soft call of his name drags his attention back to her. Kleio levers herself up from the chair she was sitting in, and then she leans over him, frames his face with both palms, and presses her forehead to his. “Eísai asfalís. Eíste asfaleís, tóra.”

…why is she speaking Greek?

He pauses, takes a breath while he tries to figure out why Kleio is speaking Greek to him, and that breath brings with it the smell of antiseptic and sterility and hot food, and the soft scent of her shampoo. The scent of her hair grounds him and rocks him back to reality, and everything snaps into sharp focus, and suddenly he can feel everything, from the scratch of the hospital sheets and the cold air to the hot, fresh pain of the needles in his arms, and the dull throb of a catheter in his dick, and the ache of the wounds in his back and leg.

Alexios grimaces and tries to glance beyond Kleio, but she doesn’t let him. She turns his head back to hers until her hazel eyes fill his vision, and he finally registers the tears there and the small smile on her lips.

Alexios fixates on her eyes, studies the flecks of brown and green and blue and grey, and finally takes a deep breath, holds it, and exhales slowly.

“…Kleio?” he asks- or would, but his voice is nonexistent, as though it’s been weeks since he last used it rather than just minutes. He could swear he was just on the phone with Cosette, directing the first responders to his and Connor’s position- “Shit. Connor.”

“He’s fine.” Kleio’s touch directs his attention back to her, and Alexios blinks rapidly up at her. “He’s healing well. Cosette had her baby, and they’re all doing well.”

What?

He must be frowning, because Kleio leans down and presses a soft kiss to his lips.

“You’ve been asleep, Alexios,” she explains quietly. “You’ve been in a coma for over a month.”

…_What?_

“What?” he croaks, and then coughs and grimaces because it feels like he’s been gargling with shattered lightbulbs all night long. “The fuck-? No, no way.” He shakes his head, flops it back and forth, and the action leaves him dizzy and sick and makes his muscles ache like he hasn’t- hasn’t used them in weeks. _Oh. Shit._ “Shit. No. That shit… doesn’t happen in real life. You’re joking.”

Kleio’s expression doesn’t change from its solemn cast. “I’m not.”

“She isn’t.” The deep voice comes from beyond the fall of Kleio’s hair, and it’s one that Alexios last heard in the dark depths of Hell. Alexios whines. Kleio leans back, and Alexios peers beyond her and- and there’s Connor. He’s sitting in a wheelchair, and he’s dressed in civvies, and he’s carrying a baby in his arms, and the woman standing behind him and pushing his chair over to Alexios’s bed isn’t his wife, isn’t Cosette, but is older, and- and there’s Cosette, rising from another chair right behind the older woman, and now Alexios recognizes them. The older woman is Connor’s mom, Ziio, and that’s definitely Cosette, with those green eyes. Alexios turns wide eyes on Connor, and Connor nods up at Ziio, who wheels him over to Alexios’s bedside.

Connor’s tawny eyes are dark and warm with something Alexios can’t name as he reaches up and clasps Alexios’s wrist in his hand. Alexios grabs his friend’s forearm with a shaking hand, takes in the warm give of solid muscle. Connor’s grip is sure and firm. It grounds Alexios and anchors him, pulls him out of the darkness.

“Connor,” Alexios rasps, and his breath hitches and his eyes sting. _God._ “You’re okay. God, you’re okay.”

“I am,” Connor replies, and he squeezes Alexios’s wrist slightly. “You saved my life, man.” He glances up at Kleio, and that’s when Alexios finally notices that his fiancée has rounded the end of his bed and has seated herself beside his feet on his left side. She gives him a small smile and leans a pair of crutches against the footrail. Alexios stares for a second. Then he looks back over at Connor. The Native American man is smiling slightly at him. “It’s October fifteenth, Alexios.”

_October fifteenth. Christ._

Alexios stares at him for a long time, and it’s only when his lungs begin burning that he realizes that he’s holding his breath. He inhales, and his eyes land on the bundle in Connor’s arms. The baby blinks big, blue-grey eyes at him from beneath the protection of a blue knit cap patterned with a Yankees logo on the brow.

A boy. A son. Cosette had said that Connor had sent her into labor, and this definitely isn’t a newborn.

Alexios swallows. “…a month?”

“Yes.” Connor glances up at his mom, then pushes himself up from his chair with a steadying breath and, moving slowly and gingerly, he leans over Alexios and carefully lays the baby upon Alexios’s chest. Alexios freezes for an instant. Then he raises a shaking hand and settles it over that baby’s tiny back, feels the soft slide of skin through the thin fabric of the onesie in which he’s dressed. The baby is hot as a furnace, and Alexios’s palm spans the width of his back with ease; the baby’s heartbeat and every little breath throb against Alexios’s thumb and fingertips like the fluttering of a hummingbird’s wings. Connor settles back into his wheelchair with a soft sigh. Alexios meets his gaze, and Connor smiles over at him. “This is our son, Corbin Alexander Kenway- named partly after you.”

Alexios takes in the words for a few breathless seconds. Then he turns his gaze down to the baby- Corbin- who is now snuffling against his chest, and the tension drains from him so quickly it leaves Alexios lightheaded.

“Christ,” Alexios breathes, and he presses his lips together hard while his throat goes tight and his eyes burn. He reaches up and covers his eyes with his free hand, fights back the heat in his eyes. When he inhales, the sound is damp and crackles with wetness. His voice comes out strangled. “What the hell were you thinking, naming a kid after a screwup like me?”

And then his breath hitches again and he rubs the baby’s back and neck with the side of his thumb even as the tears streak hot down his temples and soak into his hair. After a moment, he sniffles and clears his throat, and scrubs at his eyes and cheeks with the heel of his palm and the inside of his wrist, because he’s got needles and an oxygen meter on his finger and in the back of his hand. Alexios blows out a breath and regains himself, meets Connor’s steady gaze.

“Thank you,” Connor whispers.

Alexios reaches down and squeezes Connor’s wrist again. “No, Connor. Thank _you_.”

Because Connor was the only thing that kept Alexios sane, down in the darkness and the smoke under the looming shadow of fear and suffering and death. Connor grips Alexios’s hand tight, and Alexios sees the same darkness of recollection in his friend’s gaze, and knows Connor is seeing the same things he is.

Connor squeezes Alexios’s hand again. “We’re not there anymore, Alexios. They got us out. We’re safe.”

Alexios takes a deep breath, feels the beat of Corbin’s heart beneath his palm, savors the soft, irregular puff of the infant’s breath against his collarbone, and meets Kleio’s gaze where she’s sitting beside his feet. He looks past Connor to where Kassandra is standing near Alexios’s right knee, holds her tawny gaze for a moment. Then he takes in Cosette’s emerald eyes and soft smile, Ziio’s coffee-hued eyes and the gratitude in the quirk of her lips, and Connor’s own light brown gaze, dark with remembrance and emotion. Alexios swallows and glances to his left, and Brasidas nods steadily at him from where the older man is sitting in a chair beside the window. His blue-grey gaze is calm but knowing, and that, more than anything, grounds Alexios in the present, because Brasidas has always had his back even in the middle of Hell. They’ve always kept each other grounded even while bullets were flying and lives were being taken all around them.

If Brasidas looks that calm, then that only means one thing. They’re safe.

They _are _safe.

Alexios looks back at Kleio, and something eases in his gut at the calm serenity in her gaze, the loose set of her shoulders and the way she’s got her palm resting on his knee, is stroking it gently with her thumb.

He breathes out.

* * *

_25 October, 2001. 13:20._

The doctor leaves the room a few minutes after the examination and physical therapy session, and Alexios relaxes back against the head of his hospital bed and breathes through the burning ache of his leg. Kleio is watching him from his left; she was silent through the entire session, and now she’s still sitting beneath the window with her hands folded across her belly, watching as Alexios grimaces and rubs at the cramp in his thigh. It takes Alexios a few minutes to take note of the furrow of her brow and the way she’s chewing her lips. Her gaze is distant, and she’s rubbing gently at her stomach as though she’s got something on her mind.

“What’s wrong?” he grunts, and then hisses and digs his thumbs hard into the muscle of his thigh as a cramp seizes the whole thing. He catches her distracted hum, and gasps, “You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”

Kleio grunts, and then he hears her shift. A second later, she joins him and adds her hands to his, massages deeply and carefully at his calf and at his thigh below the wound while he works at his upper thigh. Between the two of them, they ease the pain quickly enough, and then Alexios groans with relief and stretches the limb out down the bed beside her hip.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, and when he looks up at her, she’s thumbing gently at the vicious scar that now marks his thigh. When he catches her gaze, Kleio licks her lips and watches him from under her eyelashes. “I’m not trying to tune you out, I promise.”

Alexios hums and covers her hand with his. When he laces their fingers together, he finds that Kleio’s fingers are cool. He rubs the side of her hand with his thumb.

“What’s on your mind?” he asks again.

Kleio bites her lip, and then she takes a breath and turns to him more fully. “You remember that morning?”

He blinks. Which-? Oh. Alexios swallows and schools his expression. “Hard to forget.”

“I mean before the attacks.” Kleio picks at a loose thread in the hem of her shirt, and Alexios abruptly notices that the fabric is very wrinkled over her stomach, like she’s been twisting and clenching it all day and all night. “You remember how you woke me up that morning?”

He thinks back- and a lazy grin stretches across his lips. He lowers his voice in response and strokes his thumb across her knuckles.

“Of course,” he rumbles, and remembers the taste of her on his lips and tongue, the wet inferno of her clenched around him- and then remembers the slick of her on him and the chill that had run down his spine when he realized exactly what they had forgotten. “Oh. _Oh._ The condom.”

Kleio nods. She won’t look at him. Alexios thinks rapidly: the worried look in her eyes, her distraction, the wrinkles in her shirt over her stomach, the way she keeps caressing her belly-

“Are you pregnant?” he blurts out.

Kleio glances at him wide-eyed, hesitates, and then she nods. Alexios falls boneless against the bed, and then warm elation suffuses him and he starts laughing, the sound soft and rich and full of joy because _God,_ if one good thing can come out of the hell they faced that day, this would be that one good thing. Alexios catches Kleio’s dumbfounded look and tugs on her hand until she goes to him, and when she lays herself down on the mattress between him and the bed rail, he buries his hand in her hair and kisses her like it’s going out of style. Kleio is stiff against him for a second. Then she melts into him with a sigh and a soft moan of his name, and her hand curls cool around the hinge of his jaw, and her curves are warm and soft against his side.

“You’re happy?” she whispers after a moment, and Alexios barks a laugh that comes from the very core of him.

“Happy?” he counters, and beams up at her while he buries his hand in her hair. “I’m fucking ecstatic. God, I love you, woman. Shit. You think we could go down to the courthouse and get married this afternoon?”

Kleio gives an uncertain little laugh, and when she pulls back, there’s a slight downturn to the edges of her smile, an uncertainty in her eyes. “We don’t have to, you know. Just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean you have to marry me, or that we can’t wait.”

“I don’t want to wait.” Alexios breathes out and curls his hand around the back of her neck, cups her skull in his fingers, and when he presses his forehead to hers, he can’t help the overwhelming love that wells in his heart. “I don’t want to wait, Kleio. I waited two fucking years to ask you because I was too much of a coward to see that I wanted to be with you in every way. After what we went through…” He exhales roughly, and a shiver wracks him. He kisses her again. “It almost ended. All of it. I almost lost you, and I almost died, and you know what? I’m through with the waiting. I’m through with wasting time. I want to marry you. I want to make that commitment, and I don’t want to waste another minute when I could be married to you and have the honor and privilege of calling you my wife.”

He pulls back, and she’s crying and smiling, and Alexios’s heart soars.

“All right,” she chuckles. “All right. We’ll do it tomorrow. You want me to tell Kass and Brasidas?”

“And Connor and Cosette, too.” He kisses her lightly, again and again, until she’s beaming against his lips and neither of them can hold back their laughter. “And Alkibiades, Sokrates, Kyra, and Thaletas, and Altaïr and Maria, too. I want them to be there, if they can.” He blows out a breath and suddenly calms, and presses his forehead hard to hers. “After all that… I want them to help us celebrate this new beginning. I want us all to feel alive together, to celebrate life.”

“I understand.” Kleio hugs him tight, then, and when she pulls back, she’s smiling softly and her hazel eyes twinkle at him in the midday sunlight. “First, though, I thought… would you like to come with me to my first ultrasound?”

Alexios blinks and goes still, and then he pulls back and glances down at her belly, still concealed under the wrinkled fabric of her grey t-shirt and the fall of her black zip-up hoodie.

“You mean now?”

“I’m scheduled at two.”

“Let’s go! Just let me get my shoes.”

* * *

_29 November, 2001. 03:47._

_Pop. Pop-pop. P-Pop-pop. Pop. Ashes. Smoke. Dust. Choking. Can’t get enough air. Bodies, falling through the air, smashing into concrete. A groan from overhead. Go, go, go, go go gogogogo!_

_rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR**RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-**_

Alexios shoots upright, chasing the tail end of a scream, and he’s shaking and sweating and gasping for breath, and his leg is cramping, but- but no, he’s not there, now, he’s not in the darkness and the ash and the smoke. He’s not covered in blood, he’s not buried alive, he’s not- he’s not-

“Hey,” Kleio murmurs softly from his left, and Alexios turns his gaze down to her and finds that she’s watching him calmly but not without concern where she’s stretched out on her side alongside him. When she sees him turn to her, she licks her lips and lays her hand upon his thigh, thumbs gently at his hip. She doesn’t have to ask what it is that he was dreaming of. It’s the same thing that’s been haunting him since that day almost two and a half months ago. Instead, her eyes gleam up at him through the darkness, and Kleio raises herself up and wraps her arms around his shoulders, presses her face into his neck. “It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re safe. You’re home. You’re not there, anymore. You’re not there.”

Alexios exhales shakily and buries his face in her shoulder, and when he shivers, she cards her fingers through his sweat-damp hair. It takes him a moment, a few minutes of feeling her body pressed against his, of her breasts pressed against his chest, of the warm weight of her arms around his shoulders and her cheek against his, but eventually the tension leaves him and he lets the shakes take him, lets the shivers run down his spine and acknowledges that it was just a dream. It was just a dream, and he’s safe, and Kleio is safe.

He clenches his eyes shut, and gingerly detaches Kleio’s arms from him. Clears his throat.

“I… I sweated through my shirt,” he rasps, and Kleio makes an affirmative noise deep in her throat. “I’m going to go take a shower.”

Kleio’s eyes gleam at him through the darkness. Then she sighs softly and kisses him, sweet and chaste.

“Okay,” she whispers. “I’ll be here.”

Alexios hums quietly and presses a kiss to her palm- her left palm, and the wedding ring on her finger sends a pleased flutter through his stomach just as it always does- and then he swings his legs out of the bed and crosses the room to his chest of drawers by the window for a fresh t-shirt and shorts.

He’s turning back to leave the room when he spots them: three shadowed figures standing in the street below. Alexios frowns and slowly sets his clothing aside. When he steps up to the window and peers down into the alley, a chill runs down his spine. Those are Kosmos Kult tattoos on two of the figures’ necks, and the third…

“Damnit, Kassandra,” he breathes, and in a flash, he’s grabbed his Sig from under his pillow and is pelting out the door as fast as his bad leg will carry him. Kleio calls his name in confusion behind him, and then he hears her footsteps following him, but by the time she reaches the door, Alexios is already down two of the three flights of stairs and is heading for the front door of their building.

The night air is frigid on his bare, sweaty skin, and he instantly regrets not bringing a coat or at least putting on some pants, but his attention is on Kassandra where she’s standing in front of a dark-haired woman and a big man at the mouth of the alley across the street.

“Hey!” he barks, and Kassandra goes stiff while the two gang members’ gazes land upon Alexios. The man looks uncomfortable, but it’s the woman’s gaze that chills Alexios the most. Her eyes look dead even in the gloom of the late November night. “What the fuck do you want?”

The woman hums and regards Alexios coolly, but it’s the man who answers.

“We heard that Kassandra needed some help with medical bills,” he says, and it’s a true enough statement that the bile curdles in Alexios’s gut. “We were offering to help.”

“For a price, no doubt,” Alexios scoffs, and spits onto the blacktop at their feet as he draws even with Kassandra and then steps in front of her with his handgun lowered but ready in front of him. The two gang members’ eyes go straight to the gun, but neither of them steps back. “We don’t need your help. Get lost before I call the cops or shoot you.”

“Alexios-”

“Go back inside, Kassandra,” he growls without taking his eyes off the two criminals before him. “They were just leaving.”

“Kassandra!” Kleio’s voice comes from across the street, and Alexios hears the ratcheting sound of her racking the slide of her own firearm. “Kass, come on, now!”

Alexios steps to the side and then back, deliberately forces himself back against Kassandra, and then he steps back again when he runs into her and she protests his movements. She doesn’t resist, though, and that’s telling. Alexios keeps his eyes on the two gang members in front of them until they reach the middle of the street, and that’s when he glances around and finds Kleio kneeling on the ground, her gun trained on the next alleyway over. The hair lifts on the back of Alexios’s neck as he realizes that more and more gang members are emerging from the alleyways up and down the street. There must be a dozen of them or more. Alexios has a full magazine, but that only means he has ten rounds plus the one in the chamber, and his aim is good, but it’s the middle of the night, and… well, he doesn’t like their odds.

“Fuck,” he breathes. He and Kassandra reach Kleio. “Kleio, you and Kass get back inside and call the cops.”

“Already done,” Kleio responds, and when he glances at her again, he catches the soft green glow of her phone against her cheek. “Yes, my name is Kleio Agiadis. There is a large group of gang members threatening me, my husband, and my sister outside of our home.” She pauses, and then rattles off their address and her cell number. “Please send help. My husband and I are armed- yes, yes, they want my sister to go with them in exchange for their ‘help’ with medical bills- no. My husband and I were at the Twin Towers. We are refusing their assistance, and- I count two dozen of them. Maybe twenty-eight. Yes, it looks like they’re armed.”

“Kleio, _inside,”_ Alexios hisses. Kleio gets up, keeps her Kimber trained on the gang members to their right, and as one, the three of them back up, move slowly into the doorway. Alexios gets Kass inside first, then Kleio, and starts backing up himself, and he’s shaking by the time he closes the door behind him. He remains at the door with gun in hand until flashing lights fill the street and the gang scatters into the shadows, scuttles away like an intrusion of cockroaches fleeing a flashlight. Alexios waits to open up the door until a knock comes at the frame and he sees a police officer’s face in the street lights.

It’s a familiar face, and Alexios’s knees go a little watery with relief.

“Jacob,” Alexios murmurs when he opens up the door. Jacob Frye is observing the street, but at Alexios’s greeting, he turns back to him with a small, tight smile, and Alexios beckons him and his partner into the apartment. Bayek Siwa nods to Alexios as he and Jacob enter the premises.

“Alexios,” Jacob replies, and he and Bayek both shake Alexios’s hand. Their eyes linger on Alexios’s face, and he can only guess how haggard he must look. It takes a moment for him to realize that he’s standing there in his t-shirt and gym shorts, and he’s still sweaty from his nightmare and, now that he’s inside, he realizes that he’s freezing. The frigid November air has done nothing for him. Jacob settles a hand on Alexios’s shoulder. “C’mon, mate, let’s get you upstairs an’ make you a cuppa tea, yeah?”

Alexios nods and allows his friends to escort him upstairs to his apartment. Kleio meets them at the door with gun in hand, and when she sees who it is, she lowers it with a sigh of relief and turns back to the kitchen, where Alexios can see that the light is on over the table.

“Kass, it’s okay,” Kleio calls, and Kassandra pokes her head out from around the corner of the hallway. Kleio thumbs the safety back on and sets her Kimber on the table by the door. “Jacob, Bayek, it’s good to see you. Thanks for coming out.”

“Of course,” Bayek intones, and he and Jacob take a second to hang their thick winter service coats on the hooks by the door. “Come. I shall make you all some tea, and we shall have a few words, yes?”

“Sounds good,” Kleio sighs, and she ducks into the living room and grabs the blankets from the couch before she joins Kassandra in the kitchen where Kass has already gotten the kettle filled and is sparking the stove to life. Alexios stops for a murmured conversation with Jacob in the foyer, and by the time they join Bayek and the women in the kitchen, Alexios hears a car pull up outside and the sound of feet pounding up the stairs meets his ears. A second later, a key turns in the lock of the door, and Brasidas bursts in, closes and locks the door behind himself, and barges into the kitchen.

He goes straight to Kassandra and pulls her to his chest, hugs her tight and murmurs questions in her ear, and then he pushes her back and glances her over.

“I’m not hurt,” Kass mumbles, and scuffs her toe against the floor. “Thanks to Alexios and Kleio.”

She gestures to the pair in question, and Brasidas finally looks up as though registering their presence for the first time. He colors under Kleio’s regard, but Alexios is just too damn tired for this. He sinks into a chair and lowers his head into his hands with an exhausted sigh.

“What happened?” Brasidas asks.

Alexios shudders. He’s freezing, all of a sudden. A blanket drapes itself across his shoulders, and Alexios blinks drowsily up at his wife, who is regarding him with a soft smile. Her own hands are just starting to shake. Alexios pulls the blanket a bit tighter around himself, and then accepts a mug of tea when Bayek holds it out in front of him. When he inhales, Alexios scents chamomile. He gives Bayek a grateful nod.

Bayek returns the nod, and then looks over at Kassandra. “Kassandra, would it be all right with you if I ask you a few questions in the sitting room? Brasidas, you can come, too.”

Kass and Brasidas nod, and with a lingering look at Alexios, they follow Bayek into the other room, and Jacob sits himself down across the table from Alexios. Jacob doesn’t say anything. He just raises an eyebrow, and Alexios reads him just as well as he did when they were serving in Kosovo together.

“I woke up in a sweat, and when I went to get a change of clothing and shower, I looked out the window and saw two of the gang members in the alley across the street with Kassandra,” Alexios murmurs. He nods at the hallway. “You want to look, you can. My clothes are still sitting on top of the dresser. Not much else to see.”

Jacob pulls a pad of paper from his pocket and starts making notes. “What happened then?”

“Kosmos Kult has been stalking Kassandra for weeks,” Alexios sighs. “Since before the Twin Towers. I grabbed my pistol and ran outside with the intention of scaring them off. When I asked what they wanted, the man said that they had heard that Kassandra needed help with medical bills, and that they- the gang- were offering to take care of it.”

Jacob hums low in his throat. “And knowing Kosmos Kult, they never do anythin’ without a price. And then?”

“I told Kass to go back inside. Kleio came out with her pistol and phoned the police while we retreated, and then all these gang members just started coming out of the alleyways and converging on our location.” Alexios shudders. “There must have been at least two dozen of them. It was dark enough that I couldn’t tell whether or not they were armed.”

“Anything else?”

“No.” Alexios sighs and buries his face back in his hands. “No. We got inside and I waited at the door until you two showed up.”

“Kleio, you want t’add anythin’?”

“No, my story is basically the same as Alexios’s,” Kleio admits, and her presence is warm and solid at Alexios’s side. “September ninth, I looked out the window and saw the same woman and man from tonight standing on that same corner, watching as Kassandra entered our building. I saw the woman make a gang sign, like this-” Kleio crooks her first two fingers and hooks them down through the air, like a cobra striking. “-and then they departed. Tonight, Alexios saw them, grabbed his gun, and ran out of the room. When I went to the window, I saw Kassandra standing there talking with the same man and woman. I saw the Kosmos Kult tattoos on their necks, and I grabbed my own gun and my cellular phone, and followed Alexios out of the apartment. When I got down to the door, I saw Alexios urging Kassandra back toward the apartment, and that was when I saw the other gang members in the shadows of the alleyway of the building across the street on our right. It looked to me as though they were carrying weapons, though I couldn’t tell whether they had bats or crowbars or rifles. That was when I dialled the emergency number.”

Jacob nods and keeps writing, and Alexios sips at his tea in silence until the other man looks up.

“I’m not gonna lie, mate, Kosmos Kult’s a hairy mess, an’ no mistake,” Jacob murmurs. “I’ll report this to the higher-ups, but without anythin’ concrete, I’m not sure what we’ll be able to do. The fact that you’ve seen ‘em watchin’ or talkin’ to Kass twice in three months is helpful, but only in that we now know they’re interested in her.”

Alexios’s blood pressure spikes. “And there’s nothing we can do?”

Jacob’s answering chuckle is dark. His blue eyes glint at Alexios from under his dark brows, and the brittle smile on his lips says a lot.

“Move outta the city, mate,” Jacob replies softly, and then he heaves a sigh and scrubs a hand down his face. “Listen. I know that New York is your home. I know you don’t want to leave, but Alexios, these blokes aren’t just gonna let Kass go now that they’re interested in her. You move across the city, they’ll find her. You move down the coast, they’ll find her. They’re not as big in the heartland, and they don’t really have a great international presence, so if you move internationally or to the Midwest, you might be able to find someplace where they won’t be able to find you.” He pauses. “But you want to stay in the Big Apple? Better expect that this won’t be the last you see of ‘em.”

Alexios digests that in silence for a moment. Then he takes another sip of tea, lets it warm him from the inside out, and gives a small nod.

“We’ll have to figure out what we’re going to do, then.” He exhales and peers at Jacob over the rim of his teacup. “Is there anything else you need?”

Jacob’s lips quirk. He leans back in his chair and spreads his arms to either side. “To win the lottery? The courage to ask Brynn t’ marry me? A pint of stout and a fresh paper of fish and chips?”

Alexios gives a genuine smile and reaches up and covers Kleio’s hand with his own where she’s still holding onto his shoulder.

“Well, I can’t help with the first or the last, but as to asking Brynn to marry you?” Alexios glances up at Kleio, and then licks his lips. “I’d say just do it. You never know when something will happen. Better just to do it and live without regrets than to have something happen and wish you had asked.”

Jacob is quiet a moment. His slate eyes flick back and forth between Alexios and Kleio, and for that moment, Alexios sees the knowing in his friend’s eyes.

“I haven’t seen ya since it happened,” Jacob murmurs, and when he meets Alexios’s eyes again, Jacob’s own gaze is dark. “You know, I’ve reenlisted.”

Alexios blinks. “Come again?”

“Yeah.” Jacob fiddles with the paper before him, thumbs at the graphite there, and the look on his face is one of icy rage contained by sheer willpower and not much else. “A lot of the guys from our old unit are doin’ it. There’s gonna be a war, ‘Lex. They’re gonna go after Al-Qaeda, and I want in on the action.” A shudder wracks his frame, and he reaches up and buries a hand in his hair. “I can’t… I can’t let that happen again. Never again.”

Alexios stares at his friend across the table, contemplates the possibility of reenlisting, of going back out there and fighting the guys who commanded the attack two months ago. He thinks about gearing up, about going to the Middle East, about hunting through every crag and sandy crevice of that region for the bastards who did it.

He thinks about putting a bullet through Osama bin Laden’s forehead, and relishes the thought.

But then he swallows and puts the fantasy away with a soft sigh, and reaches out and pats Jacob on the arm. “I admire your zeal and your passion, Jacob, and I’ll pray continually for your safety, and for the safety of the rest of our troops over there.”

Jacob nods, and his eyes linger on Alexios for a moment. “Sure you don’t want to re-up with us?”

Alexios gives him a regretful smile. “Couldn’t pass the Army PFT now if I wanted to.” He presses a hand to his chest. “Inhaled too much dust on-site. Doctors say I’ve lost approximately twenty percent lung capacity, and the wound to my thigh has left me with a persistent limp. I’ll be lucky if I can pass the FBI’s PFT, and they’re more inclined to take me anyway because I’m multi-lingual.”

Jacob ducks his head, but Alexios doesn’t see pity in his eyes, and for that, he is grateful.

Jacob and Bayek leave not long after that, and Brasidas offers to camp out on the couch. Alexios accepts the offer, too tired and too grateful for the extra set of eyes and ears, and he goes in and takes a hot shower while Kleio is pulling out some sheets and a couple blankets for Brasidas to use. It’s after he comes out, still damp and drying off, that Kassandra finds him. He regards her evenly for a moment where she’s sitting on the foot of his and Kleio’s bed, and Kass pouts up at him until Alexios sighs and drapes his wet towel over the back of his desk chair.

“I’m listening,” he murmurs, and sinks down onto the side of the bed beside her.

“Her name is Nyx.” That… was not something that Alexios was expecting. He blinks and frowns over at her, and Kass won’t look at him. She’s fiddling with the zipper of her jacket and picking at it with her nails. “And his name is Lagos. I think he went to high school with Brasidas.”

Alexios swallows. “You’re sure? Did you tell Bayek?”

Kass nods. “I am, and I did. He says it might help them, or help the FBI.”

He sighs and nudges her shoulder with his. “Good.” He pauses. “I’m glad you’re okay, by the way. Jesus, you scared the shit out of me.”

Kass mumbles an “’m sorry,” and Alexios leans a little more heavily on her. “Ela, Kassandra.”

“What.”

“You remember what we were talking about on the phone, when I-” He gulps, and then finishes weakly, “before they found me?”

She’s quiet a moment. Then, slowly, “You mean what we were talking about, with Grandfather’s villa?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, I remember.” She peers over at him. “Are you considering going back to Greece?”

“I am.” He admits it with a sigh, and glances around his- his and Kleio’s- room. They don’t own this apartment, will never own this apartment, but it’s become his home and Kassandra’s home since their parents died and he had to sell their house because he couldn’t make the mortgage payments. Still, leaving it isn’t the worst thing he can think of. “If Kosmos Kult really is looking at you, and they’re serious about it, Jacob mentioned they don’t have a big international presence. He also mentioned they aren’t that prominent in the Midwest, either. Plus, for me… well, after everything that’s happened, I kind of want to find someplace quiet and peaceful to settle down and raise a family.”

Kass considers his words for a moment, and then she hums softly. “I think you should talk to Kleio about it, but I think you have a good point. I’ve heard the Midwest is generally a peaceful place, too.” She pauses, and then wrinkles her nose. “I wouldn’t want to live in the EU, though. You think I chafed just under your house rules? Shit, I’d go nuts under socialism.”

Alexios barks a laugh at the off-the-wall statement, and Kassandra’s answering smile tells him she’s not entirely serious. He bumps her shoulder again, and then he leans his head against hers with a sigh.

“S’agapó, brat,” he murmurs.

“Maláka,” she returns, but he hears her smile and finds himself smiling, too. After a moment, she says, “Hey, would you have a problem with it if I spent the night with Brasidas?”

“Fuck you.”

“Mmm, fuck Brasidas, actually.”

“Ugh. Ew. Just no. That’s disgusting. Don’t say any more. Please, I beg you. Have mercy.”

Kassandra snickers. “You and Kleio do it all the time.”

“We’re fucking married.”

“You weren’t married when you fucked for the first time.”

“Jesus Christ. That’s beside the point, maláka.” He heaves a heavy sigh, and when he raises his head, Kass is smiling at him, her expression happier than he has seen it in a long time. “Kass, I’m happy that you’re happy with Brasidas, and I gave him my blessing on asking you out months ago. That does _not_ mean that I want to imagine my best friend doing it with my baby sister whose diapers I changed. Katalavaínoun?”

Kassandra giggles, and Alexios bumps her shoulder with his again.

“All right, all right,” she snickers, “I’ll take your advice and wait a while before I seduce him.” She pauses, and then an unholy grin spreads across her face. “Besides, he does seem like he likes taking charge-”

“Maláka!” Alexios growls, and lunges at her. Kassandra shoots off the bed and out the door with a giggle before he can grab her in a headlock and dig his knuckles into the crown of her head. She pokes her head back in, and she’s beaming at him. He gives her a jaundiced look. “What.”

“Nothing,” she chirps. “S’agapó, maláka.”

He glares for a second longer, and then he melts and shakes his head with a small smile. “I love you, too, Kass. Good night.”

“G’night, Alexios.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_Greek Translations:_**  
_Είσαι ασφαλής. Είσαι ασφαλής τώρα. (Eísai asfalís. Eíste asfaleís, tóra.):_ You're safe. You're safe, now.  
_Katalavaínoun:_ Understand?  
_S’agapó:_ I love you (unconditionally).  
_Maláka:_ Asshole, shit, damn, etc. All-purpose curse word.
> 
> Just the epilogue to go, now. Remember what Alexios said about his lung capacity while I wrap things up.
> 
> Also, I absolutely adore how much of a troll Kass is in here. She's a trolling teenager and Alexios is a cranky old man and it just makes my heart sing. I might have to write this dynamic again, sometime. What do you guys think?

**Author's Note:**

> Hard to believe it's been 18 years since that day. (Update 9/19/20: 19 years, now. It never gets any easier.)
> 
> I was a self-absorbed kid when it happened, and honestly, I don't remember most of that day, but I remember the effects it had. The other night, my mom turned on a documentary called "Inside 9/11: Zero Hour". The testimonies gave me chills.
> 
> This is in remembrance of the people who died that day, and who sacrificed their lives for those trapped in the burning towers. May God rest all your souls.
> 
> As always, please let me know what you think. I would really appreciate hearing your thoughts and opinions!


End file.
